


All The Help We Can Get

by elzierav



Series: All the Help, Ever, Always [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Flirting, Flirting, Fluff and Angst, Ironwood redemption, M/M, OT3, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Volume 7, Recovery, Slow Burn, clover lives, will add character tags as i go along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 150,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elzierav/pseuds/elzierav
Summary: He’s been told his Semblance is good luck. Not that he remembers.He’s been told he’s been very lucky, that his vital organs were miraculously untouched, and that he was exceptionally fortunate to have survived at all. He’s been told his amnesia is a consequence of trauma and that memories will come back rapidly if he’s lucky, which he should be. That he should just rest, recover, and remember. Or at least, try to.Clover's lost his memories and almost his life, Qrow's lost his mind, Ironwood's lost his heart. On their long, tortuous path to recovery, all they may find is each other. Set immediately after V7.
Relationships: Clover Ebi & James Ironwood, Clover Ebi & Winter Schnee, Clover Ebi/James Ironwood, Qrow Branwen & Winter Schnee, Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi, Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi/James Ironwood, Qrow Branwen/James Ironwood
Series: All the Help, Ever, Always [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838785
Comments: 237
Kudos: 161





	1. Like a map, like a dance

He’s been told his Semblance is good luck. Not that he remembers. 

He’s been told he’s been very lucky, that the broadsword damaged his spine, collapsed his lung and caused several fractures in his ribcage, but that his vital organs were miraculously untouched, and that he was exceptionally fortunate to have survived at all. Not that he remembers. He’s been told his amnesia is a consequence of trauma and that memories will come back rapidly if he’s lucky, which he should be. That he should just rest, recover, and remember. Or at least, try to. 

He’s been told his name is Clover, and isn’t that ironic? What came before, he wondered, the name or the Semblance? 

He’s got a lot of time for such musings, sitting in hospital for days, weeks, maybe months on end waiting for his injuries to heal. This is odd, it seems like a war rages outside, and wouldn’t Atlas need all the help it can get? Wouldn’t he be more useful out there in the battlefield, serving his Kingdom, than amongst stiff clean white military hospital bed sheets? Well, not that he can really fight just yet. His breathing is still laboured, his back hurts like hell, and his weapon feels heavy. 

He’s been told his weapon is called Kingfisher, one of the deadliest arms in Atlas. Not that he remembers, and that sounds absolutely ridiculous. Because it’s a fishing rod. _A fishing rod_. Enough said.

Not that he gets anything to say, or anyone to talk to. Some nurses visit him, check his vitals, serve him meals. He wonders if his tired throat is still capable of human speech, he’s forgotten the sound of his own voice. Not that it’s the only thing he doesn’t remember. Sometimes the silence is overbearing, the idleness is nauseating, and the simple soft sound of Kingfisher swishing through the air brings meagre solace to his slowly healing heart. 

When doctors and nurses finally agreed he was well enough to stand on his feet without assistance, they encouraged him to train with his weapon. They told him the familiar gestures, sights, sounds would help bring back memories. He swings the weapon with practised ease, muscle memory at work like the cogs of a well-oiled machine. In the cramped space of the hospital room, he doesn’t let out the hook, but his eyes follow the imaginary trajectory it would have traced through the air, in attempt to decipher what paths the fishing line would have spun out, what kind of warrior he’d been, what kind of man he was. 

Feet move nimbly to secure his balance, arms raise automatically across steady guard positions, fists strike at an invisible enemy more and more powerfully and confidently. As the days pass, he trains to the quiet rhythm of his slowly recovering breathing, his slowly healing heart beat. And yet he can’t recall that much more… All he can do is to follow the imaginary curve of the fishing line like a map, to follow the martial moves like a dance whose choreography lives deep within his bones, a dance he cannot forget. 

He closes his eyes, trying to catch an elusive glimpse of a memory behind his eyelids… of two words, a sunrise, a breathtaking sunrise… and almost knocks over a metal table covered in glass vials and assorted medical equipment. He stopped himself just in time, just his luck, at the indignant sound of a cawing blackbird perched on the window sill. 

It’s another few days until he dares to go to the window to let the insistent crow in. On the other side of the glass, the sooty shadows of aerial Grimm lurk among the white Atlesian clouds, but that’s not the worst of it - the height and cold of the sky city keeps most of the creatures of darkness at bay. No, what he resents is the reflection staring back at him across the thin surface of the window, the hollow uncomprehending eyes, the man who must be but a shadow of his former self, who had but stained bandages where his heart should be. A few days elapse until he steps toward the window, resolutely looking down at his feet while his trembling fingers slide the transparent panel open. 

The bird seems elated by his company, bouncing and flapping jet-black wings happily, tilting its head while intelligent red eyes peer at him with curiosity. Even the crow is executing some kind of dance of its own, some kind of ritual each morning when greeted by Clover. And he still doesn’t know what it means, what all of this means. 

He saves different nibbles for his newfound friend, bread crumbs, boiled peas, salad leaves, diced fruit, and diverse fragments of dull hospital meals. In fair exchange, the corvid sometimes brings him presents, mysterious, shiny trinkets - a safety pin, a silver bottle cap, a round button from a military uniform…

What an unbelievable coincidence, he thinks when the crow delicately deposits a metal charm from its beak into his large palm, a pin shaped like his namesake four-leaved clover and adorned with a lucky horseshoe. What are the odds? Clover must be a very lucky man, he thinks to himself. 


	2. Like a broken mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a flashback, this chapter picks up right after the volume ends. Hope you enjoy :)

_Two weeks earlier_

“How dare you!?” Qrow shrieks atop his lungs.

His throat is parched ablaze, his wrists still marked by the sharp memories of the handcuffs, his fingers reddened from rubbing Clover’s pin so much it shone, so much he can’t tell if any of the blood on his hands is his own, because he feels so empty, yet everything hurts. 

“You should be grateful you were set free,” Ironwood comments sternly, tiredly, the darkness in his eyes, in those mesmerising eyes Qrow had come to know so well, hinting he’d already passed his breaking point. 

“Robyn got out of her way to prove my innocence just now, to use her Semblance on me in front of the guards to prove that I didn’t… that I wasn’t… the one who...”

His voice is unravelling, slowly, surely, and it won’t take much more before the tears start welling down his barely dried cheeks again.

“Ms Hill is culpable of criminal offense,” Winter cuts in sharply, hands held behind her back by the side of her General, who sits at his usual chair behind his desk sporting a brand new arm cast. “It’s known she stole from multiple military shipments. We can’t let a thief run loose.”

Their pretense is ineffective, almost ridiculous, both Ironwood and Schnee keeping a desperate facade with their gazes leveled and their backs ramrod straight. Winter’s hair is still down, unkempt silver locks pouring down her shoulders and still healing cuts littering her porcelain skin… she looks vulnerable, almost _hot_ like that for such a cold woman, but Qrow’s past the stage of noticing, he hasn’t come for that. 

“Robyn’s a Huntress,” the shapeshifter retorts, “and looking at the mess out there, we need all the help we can get.”

“Irrelevant,” she snaps, “once we raise the city high enough the Grimm won’t -”

“You haven’t come for Robyn Hill,” James remarks dryly, cutting off his Specialist with a wary wave of his gloved hand. “You can’t lie with me, I’ve known you for too long. I’m tired of people like Ozpin, people like you who keep their little secrets to themselves. Tell me, Qrow, what have you come for?”

Where should he start? There’s too many things, he thinks as he tightens his grip around Clover’s pin in his closed fist, the cold metal edges pressed into his palm almost making him _feel_ something amongst the pain, the numbness. There’s too many things, and he doesn’t know if he has the strength to follow through, if he has the strength to even think about...

“Where are my nieces?” he bellows finally, and he’s pretty sure those tears are starting to fall again… he must look pathetic, Raven would’ve scoffed at him… but at present he can’t care anymore. 

“Unknown. They were believed to be in a ship hijacked by Dr Polendina with Penny and the rest of their teams.”

“Mantle...” Qrow exhales finally. “They went to defend Mantle… too bad the kiddos can tell what the right thing to do is, and yet _you_ can’t, Jimmy.”

“Ensuring that the Staff doesn’t get into Salem’s hands, that at least some of humanity, at least some of those we could save, from Atlas and Mantle, will make it out alive is a cost we have to pay for -”

“Does it make it right? Does it make it right to leave Mantle behind, to leave _anyone_ behind? Does it make it right to sacrifice anyone, to sacrifice Clover? Does it make it right to put me and a bunch of _kids_ on the top priority wanted list, forcing your best soldiers who should’ve been defending Mantle, fighting Salem and her henchmen, to interrupt their duties to fight us? Your orders, your stupid orders, and his endless trust for you are the reason why Clover got… why Tyrian was able to… ”

“Captain Ebi is receiving emergency medical aid right now,” Winter speaks as the Huntsman eventually wavers. “Let’s not jump onto a warpath for revenge until we hear more about how his condition evolves...”

“His condition? What do you know of his condition? I was there, I saw it, and how can I tell that you’re not lying to me, like Jimmy lied about the tower? Like you, Ice Queen, would rather fight me at Beacon than tell me the truth? Like you two are so terrible at communicating anything with me? You may hate secrets, but after Lionheart, after Ozpin and all their deceptions, I’m fed up with _liars_!”

“What do you think? That I’d lie to you and leave one of my best men to die? That it doesn’t hurt me?” Ironwood challenges, increasingly irate. “You’ve known Clover for what, weeks? I’ve known him for years, trained him, fought alongside him, groomed him for power so he could take my place one day. He was more than a brother at arms to me, more than a brother… and you think what happened to him is nothing to me? That you can come to my office with his blood still fresh on your hands, and pin the blame on me? I would take the blame, a thousandfold if that’s what it took to stop Salem. But from you? It hurts, because I was worried for you. You’ve lost your mind, Qrow, and here I thought you were my _friend_.”

“I am your friend, which is why I’m here to confront you, to drag you back to the right path before it’s too late.” 

“Too late? Well maybe it is too late now, because I don’t have time for this.”

What did Qrow expect? That it wasn’t too late already? That Ironwood wasn’t too far gone? That something was left to salvage? That James hadn’t lost his heart, and Qrow his mind already, spiralling down a path of bloody vengeance? That there was any hope left for the shapeshifter at all, hope for redemption, for bringing light into someone else’s life like Ruby, like Clover did to him? That Qrow wasn’t doomed from the start to serve as a harbinger of misfortune?

“I know your heart’s in the right place. Now listen to me.”

And Qrow hates what he’s saying, hates the unhinged half-lies he utters, hates the hoarse words he croaks out like a broken record, hates his attempts to convince himself he and James aren’t beyond help, hates his own guts more than ever before… This is the first time he messes up and isn’t even drunk in the aftermath, and that definitely doesn’t help. He needs a drink, his hands are shaking, his whole body is trembling to its core and he desperately needs a drink...

“I have the world to save, Qrow.”

“And I have _you_ to save!”

And those unfeeling hard, cold, cobalt eyes hurt so much. Qrow wishes he could drown in them so he could feel the pain, freezing, burning, scalding, just to feel alive… How could James be so oblivious of the shapeshifter’s feelings? And how could Qrow have been foolish enough to think the military leader would acknowledge the Huntsman’s feelings toward him, much less reciprocate them, when Ironwood was ready to let go of selfish feelings for the greater good? 

“ _I_ don’t matter if it means Salem can be stopped.”

“Listen to me, James!”

Instead, the slightest hint of hesitation caresses the sharp features of his tin man, faint enough for the Huntsman’s trained eyes only to detect. The Atlesian seems to contemplate Qrow’s words for a second, as if hesitating...

“ _General_ ,” Ironwood finally rectifies.

And drawing his gun from his holster, he shoots at Qrow. 

In lieu of a warning, all the General has time to see is the shapeshifter’s eyes glowing dangerously red, before Due Process misfires, causing a small explosion in his gloved hand. Qrow’s misfortune flares out further, ceiling lamps crackling and sparking, red floor lighting flickering erratically, window blinds rising and tumbling along a macabre dance… As Winter brings her hand to her weapon, a small Manticore manages to burst its way through the panoramic window, shattering the glass like a broken mirror and diving straight toward them. 

A veil of darkness descends upon Qrow’s vision, his Semblance burst taking an immediate toll on his Aura. From a corner of his suddenly blurred vision, he catches the Specialist swiftly beheading the Grimm with her sword before he falls to his knees, the office spinning dangerously before his eyes. 

“Qrow? Qrow, can you hear me?” Winter’s concerned voice calls out his name, somewhere amidst a distant fog. 

She must have taken a page out of her sister’s book, because the next thing he knows, her arms are wrapped tightly around him, her strong embrace cushioning his fall. Her white hair caresses his neck, sending strange tingles across his skin like the touch of so many snowflakes. 

“Qrow?” a different voice prompts.

The shapeshifter wants to answer, to raise his chin to gaze into the stunning blue irises of the General just starting to realise what he’d done as he crouches in genuine concern by the scythe-wielder’s side. Qrow wants to say something, anything…

But it’s too hard, too painful, everything hurts and his eyelids are too heavy, the world is too heavy, everything is too heavy…

When he regains consciousness, he’s aware of clean, soft bed sheets against his skin, and he deduces he’s not in a prison cell. Had Ironwood not been heartless after all? Outside the window, the shattered moon has risen, and Qrow deduces he’s been unconscious for hours - his Semblance flare must have completely destroyed whatever little Aura he had left after the fight with Clover and Tyrian…

“How are you feeling?” a recognisable tone asks worriedly. 

“I… I don’t know...” 

Qrow’s mouth feels dry, his throat parched and tightened as he turns to face James, sitting formally at the other end of the bed… Ironwood’s bed. Of course. A gloved hand moves in tentatively to caress his shoulder through his shirt, in a gesture of tired reassurance, nothing more. A gloved hand whose human, very human warmth transpires through layers of fabric, and the Huntsman can’t help but leaning into the lingering touch, basking in the warmth, in the humanity, or whatever remnant was left of it…

“Should we...” the headmaster words tentatively, fingers travelling toward the buttons of Qrow’s vest. 

Usually, that would’ve been the moment where the shapeshifter grabs the other man’s wandering hand, discarding the glove to kiss the strong fingers, to kiss each one of them thoroughly, teasingly… That would’ve been the moment where after a long day of fighting, of defeats, of Maidens and friends lost on the battlefield, drunk as hell Qrow would’ve guided the Atlesian leader into fucking him senseless, making him feel something that’d take the pain of the loss away, the numb burn of the alcohol away. Would’ve solved their disagreements that way, for communication was often a one-way street with Ironwood otherwise. Would’ve let Jimmy play him like a fiddle, for the man needed a reminder of where the send button was, but knew by heart how to toy with Qrow’s deepest buttons until he squirmed with mindless pleasure, with blissful blankness. 

But this time, it feels different, it feels wrong… was it Qrow’s desperately sober state? Or his omnipresent sense of guilt? Or his developing feelings for Clover? Could it be…

“Your Aura needs to recover, you should rest,” James decides in reaction to Qrow looking pointedly away. 

And Qrow remembers, stifling a chuckle into the soft pillow, that this is still the kind of man who needs a reminder of where the send button is. The kind of man who just cannot bring himself to communicate verbally with him, and that’s not so bad since Qrow is absolutely not in the mood for talking right now.

A flicker of hesitation crosses the shapeshifter’s mind at the sight of James removing his coat, flashbacks of Qrow’s own fingers tirelessly working on the multiple, maddening belts surfacing in his mind. But the Huntsman soon realises that Ironwood won’t be going to bed with that many layers of clothing on, and that his stripping doesn’t denote anything more sexual. He shrugs as he turns away toward the window, admiring the shattered moonlight onto the slumbering sky city from the best viewpoint Atlas had to offer. 

“Qrow… when you collapsed I was worried for you. I had to make sure you woke up all right.”

And while James isn’t the most eloquent or perceptive, he definitely knows how to go straight to the point. Of course James had to carry Qrow to his own quarters, to monitor his recovery by himself like the control-freak he is. The shapeshifter knows, and is also aware that the General would never admit to that, so he has to make do with James’s justification. 

And right now, in their state of defeated exhaustion, that’s enough. That’s enough for Qrow to hope Ironwood has a heart in the right place under those layers of uniform, metal, and scarred skin, a beating heart that can clench with concern when his friends get hurt. That’s enough as a starting point, however insignificant, a starting point to reconstructing all that they’ve lost, all of what they are, no matter how hard the path would be. 

“I can sleep in the armchair,” Ironwood suggests. “I already have the bed to myself every-”

“No, stay.”

It’s a plea more than an order, and Qrow can barely contain a sigh of contentment as he feels a soft weight pressing into the mattress by his side, failing to remember when was the last time he’s seen the General follow orders like that. An awkward bandaged arm tries to rest on his waist with surprising gentleness, but he’s too tired to even react. And before he knows, whatever’s left of Qrow’s mind is claimed by deep, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have yet to figure out an update schedule for this and don't have that much pre-written. But since last chapter was so short I thought I'd post this today. After Clover and Qrow, we're getting Ironwood's POV next chapter. Til then, stay warm and posted xx


	3. Like father, like friend

To James, Clover had always been a son, a brother, a friend, a younger, more perfect, less broken mirror of himself, destined to take his position should anything befall him. Of course, Winter was always formally his second-in-command, but the path of a Maiden he’d planned for her, the path she’d chosen to accept was a lonely one, constrained to operate in secret for her own safety and that of the other Maidens. Clover, on the other hand, had been perfect for the limelight, perfect for becoming the public figure the General of the Atlesian army needed to be with his natural leadership skills and charisma, his Semblance and sunny disposition. 

Ironwood had hand-picked both Clover and Winter, his lucky shamrock and special snowflake, from the ranks of his Academy, watching their progress with keen appraisal as he raised them through the ranks of his army. The General never felt so safe, so confident, so _in control_ , than with Winter at his left, Clover at his right, and Penny watching his back.

Now all control’s escaping his hands, both metal and burnt flesh. Winter’s left with no Maiden powers, with her father in custody and her sister disappeared, Penny’s run away with the powers and some outlaw kids, and Clover… the General’s heart clenches at the sight of the Ace Op leader wrapped up in white bandages and white blankets in the cold hospital lighting, familiar teal eyes displaying no hint of friendly recognition at his commanding officer’s approaching form. 

“...General Ironwood?” the injured soldier greets tentatively, peering through some files on his Scroll as if to confirm his guess. “What is Atlas’s military leader doing at my bedside?”

James wants to ask if he remembers anything, but he can already see the response in the doubtful, carefully cordial eyes, and the response hurts enough without being voiced.

“I take it you’ve read the files I prepared for you summarising our current situation. Forgive me if the notes are rather… disorganised.”

“I understand you’ve been busy with other more important things than my failing memory, General. Rest assured that the files were very useful nonetheless. It is an honour to receive your help and your visit, Sir.”

“You can call me James, Clover...” Ironwood’s voice trails off, still processing how different his third-in-command sounded, so distant, so formal, so strangely familiar… Interesting. Fascinating, even. “How far did you get to?”

“I caught up with all relevant information until a year ago from now. I tried to read the more recent files initially but I couldn’t understand any of it without going through the older data first.”

So he doesn’t know about events that transpired since the Relic of Knowledge reached Atlas, James deduces. He doesn’t know about the kids, about Qrow, about the election, about martial law… The General fails to shake that strange feeling of relief that Clover can’t remember James losing control and pitting him against Qrow, can’t remember the traumatic events of his near-death experience at the hands of Tyrian, can’t blame James for it… yet. 

“How are you feeling?” only after he speaks does the headmaster recall how badly mundane conversation fits him. 

“Better than last week, so better than I can ever remember,” Clover shrugs with a small grin, “lucky me, huh?”

Ironwood lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding at the joke, at the timid resurgence of _his_ Clover, the one he used to know and love like a brother, at his unwavering optimism. But something’s wrong, as if the sunlight, albeit bright, were still too cold. Clover’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes and his recalling his luck sounds artificial, as though he’d heard about it from others rather than experienced it himself. And it’s unfair, the General decides, that his friend deserves better, shouldn’t have been so unlucky, shouldn’t have been injured, shouldn’t have almost died…

“I was your third-in-command,” the Operative ventures after a short silence, “were we friends? Is that why you’re visiting me?”

James flinches, fingernails digging into his palms through his gloves and bandages. Clover deserves better, doesn’t deserve Ironwood to drag him down, to drag him into his brokenness, his paranoia, his obsession for control, his sacrificial ways… Clover always had to be perfect, to be the perfected version that James could never be, that James was only the rough prototype for. And if that can only happen if Clover stays away from Ironwood, if his light remains untainted from the General’s darkness, then that’s one more sacrifice James is ready to make.

“The Atlas chain of command does not encourage fraternisation between officers, Operative.”

“Understood, sir. Thank you for clarifying.”

And quickly understanding teal eyes are but cold mirrors, and James can suddenly place where he’s heard this tone before, this distant professionalism… in his own voice, his robotic, broken voice, his broken heart, his broken soul. And suddenly he realises it - that pushing Clover away would only turn him into what James feared he’d become: an imperfect, broken copy of James, just another failed prototype having followed in the darkest footsteps of the first version. 

“But I did care for you… I _do_ care for you,” Ironwood murmurs, pacing quietly around the room. “Because I know what it feels like, to face death and survive, and to wake up not recognising your own body. I know it’s hard, because I’ve been through it myself.”

With his injured fingers, the headmaster carefully pulls off his glove, revealing his steel prosthetic hand underneath. A hand that the Ace Op instinctively reaches out to grasp, marvelling at the jewel of Atlesian technology beneath his very fingertips. 

“It’s wonderful that our Kingdom’s research can accomplish such miracles,” the soldier notes evenly. “You must be so strong, General, to go through such an ordeal and not only come back alive, but come back stronger.”

In this instance, Ironwood can only be grateful for his beard hiding his spreading blush. He abruptly remembers how Qrow could be so enraptured with this man and his compliments, his intoxicatingly gentle touches… Clover had always been but a younger brother to James, but a son and heir he wished he’d had. But seeing the Operative in this vulnerable state, as this broken mirror of himself, as this fawning, forgetful follower he could shape to his will, entirely and utterly under his _control…_ the General couldn’t help but find that rather intriguing, exciting, perhaps even _arousing_. 

“Is there something wrong, General?... James?” the Specialist prompts quietly, “Did I trigger… unwanted memories? I apologise...”

“No… I was just thinking that when I was in your position, when I was the one in a hospital bed with half my body covered in bandages… that you were there for me, lucky you who didn’t even receive a scratch, and I pushed you away. I didn’t want you to see me like that, because I thought I had to deal with it alone, that as you said, it’d made me strong...”

And James wants to say he was wrong, that it didn’t make him strong, only scarred, paranoid, obsessed about things beyond his control, about dumb luck and Dust explosions… He wants to say he doesn’t want Clover to be like that, that Clover deserves better, because Clover was always the better of the two of them, and that he’d sacrifice anything for it to stay that way. He wants to say so because Clover’s more than the bright future of shiny Atlas, more than a brother, than a son to James… 

But he can’t, the words remain choked up in his throat, alongside his memories of his own trauma, his own trauma that won’t go away no matter the months, the years…

“I think I understand, sir. I recall reading about this, but if you wish to talk in more detail another day, I’m here for you. After all, it’ll be a while before they discharge me from here, and I don’t have much else to do.”

And James has faced criminals, monsters, countless wars, and Salem herself, but he’s not sure he can face the eyes of his subordinate staring at him like this. He’s not sure he can fathom the breathtaking aqua eyes telling him it’s okay to be broken, telling him he doesn’t have to deal with it alone, telling him that the path to recovery will be long for both of them and he has all the time to wait. He’s not sure he can take the wordless message Clover’s eyes are trying to convey, the wordless message that means the world to him and then some. 

“I should go get my arm checked out,” the General declares, looking down at his arm cast, “I just thought I’d give you a quick visit on my way.”

“Good luck with that, General,” the Ace Op wishes earnestly, giving the slightest of encouraging squeezes onto Ironwood’s metal fingers, enough to send the meagre tatters of his heart utterly unravelling. 

* * *

The boring medical check-ups bring much-needed level-headedness to James’s agitated mind, just enough for him to go on along his busy day. Just an average busy day for the leader of a Kingdom-city under siege by the all the forces of ultimate evil. Speaking of ultimate evil, he braces himself for the facing the certain hunchman he should be visiting down Atlas’s highest-security cells. 

He lets his footsteps be heard as he walks down the dimly lit corridor, his prisoner immediately identifying him from the mere sound of his boots. 

“James,” the disturbingly familiar voice drawls. 

“Arthur,” he echoes, tone dripping with icy professionalism. 

“How is Salem treating you? Does she leave you with enough time for you to get bored and visit me down here?”

“I’ve come to ask for your help.”

“Oh, always so direct, Ironwood. I take it the fat imbecile has gone missing then, if you’ve come to as _me-_ ”

“Silence. I need something only a genius mind like yours can design.”

“Swooping so low to flatter me, I see,” Watts remarks, artfully adjusting his tie with his gloved hand. “Why should I help you? What do I get in exchange? You do know my genius always comes at a price, James. Everything always comes at a price.”

Sharp green eyes look down at the Ironwood’s ruined arm, and the General’s can only pray for Arthur not to notice his repressed shudder in the semi-darkness of the corridor across the cell bars. 

“The price is your survival. If you don’t help, you’ll die the same excruciating death as all of us up here in under-siege Atlas.”

“Starvation,” the hacker understands predictably fast. “Most Grimm can’t fly high enough to reach Atlas, but they must be busy taking down all the edible goods import airships. And Atlas has to import all of its food, so you’ll all be out of food within a month or so. However if Salem frees me first, I won’t have to worry about starving.”

“She has made no attempt to break you out so far, so I’m certain that’s not part of her plans.”

“How can I know you’re telling the truth?” Watts wonders, jaw clenching almost imperceptibly. 

“I can get Ms Hill to...”

“The lie detector in the cell next door? Nah, I’ve heard enough from her as is. I believe you, you’re not smart enough to bluff in your current state of… disarray and panic.”

James winces inwardly at the words, hitting closer to home than he would have wished.

“So what do you have for me? I can’t make food appear out of Dust, clouds, and thin air, despite my vast intellect.”

“We have a seed bank in Atlas, but no space or fertile soil to grow anything.”

“And of course, it’s too cold for anything to survive this high up and in the open,” Arthur muses, caressing his chin. “I think I can work with that.”

“I sure hope you can.”

* * *

Even in times of war, on top of everything else, the General needs to make time for those simple things, like food, like eating, drinking, sleeping… like dealing with Qrow sitting on his bed right now. 

Ironwood can make out the slender outline of the seated shapeshifter cutting a dark shadow against the window and the cold light outside. The cold light punctuated with a swirl of sanguine red, vanishing progressively as a portal closes… James struggles to breathe, he doesn’t know if he can deal with any more trouble right now, with any visits from an infamous bandit who happens to be Qrow’s sibling on the balcony of his own quarters. 

“Hey Jimmy, didn’t hear you entering,” the Huntsman rasps. “Don’t worry, she’s gone, she only dropped a little… something for us.”

And the headmaster cannot help releasing a sigh of relief as Qrow turns around against the backdrop of the mercifully empty balcony. Comfortably nested in his lean, lithe arms sits the yapping and panting sight of a black and white corgi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't even finished writing the next chapter, so I honestly don't know when's the next time I'll post... probably around next Wednesday/Thursday. Did I mention this is slow burn, really slow burn, some angst here and there, and a lot of fluff and comfort? Don't expect too much plot or anything (beyond oops we're out of food and the people in Mantle are still gonna freeze to death and such practicalities).  
> If you want to see me write plot and worldbuilding and smut and fair game, head over to my other fic REAPER IV which is all about a sci-fi dystopian-ish AU with robots and fighting and other cool stuff. The last 'real' chapter of that is coming out *tomorrow*, so you might even be able to read the whole story in one go (and then wait a week for the epilogue because man I am not ready for that one).  
> On that note, stay safe, warm, and posted xx


	4. Like a letter in the mail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> featuring dog cuddles!  
> Warning: one of the character has a panic attack toward the end of the chapter (but don't worry, dog cuddles make everything better for them in the end)

It takes two more visits from the mysterious blackbird until Clover starts to understand it wasn’t only luck all along. 

“Where did you find this?” he wonders at first, looking down at the crow perched on the windowsill. 

Talking to a bird is surely not the smartest thing he’s ever done, but at least he feels less alone and it helps him remember that’s what his voice sounds like. It still feels hoarse and shaky, but he can live with it… he has lived through much worse than a less-than-perfect voice. 

The avian’s only response is to flutter around the window in the clear Atlas air, its beak seemingly designating the expanses of silvery tundra that spread beyond the city. 

“That’s incredible. You found something so small in a place where everything’s just as shiny, if not even more. And you brought it to me. Thank you.”

A pang of almost familiar worry constricts his wounded chest at the sight of the bird glancing down bashfully, red eyes riveted to the grey concrete ledge under its talons. Clover didn’t know corvids, for all their intelligence, could understand compliments, much less deflect them. But complimenting his feathered friend still sounds nice, as if he were rendering himself ever so slightly less useless and a burden to everyone because of his injuries and amnesia, by making someone’s - or something’s - day a little brighter. 

This time when the corvid leaves, the Ace Op doesn’t feel too bad, for the pin fits strangely well in the middle of his palm, feels weirdly reassuring under the touch of his fingers, as if its hard, cold caress were almost familiar, calming like an anchor amidst the storm. 

Eventually, Clover goes through some photos in the mess of Ironwood’s files again and cracks the mystery - or at least, part of it. 

“It fits so well because it was mine,” he excitedly tells the bird sitting in his lap, nibbling at the cake crumbs on his tray. “Why didn’t you tell me the pin was mine?”

The crow turns its head inquisitively and rather adorably, staring at Clover through the semi-transparency of his Scroll displaying a picture of the Ace Ops, the four-leaved pin front and centre on the leader’s lapel. If it could roll its eyes, the blackbird definitely would have, but for now all it can utter is an indignant squawk. 

“Right. There’s no way you’d know. I forgot. Sometimes you just feel so… familiar to me. As if you’d know more about my past than I do myself. Do you know how I got this pin? Apparently, it was given to me by my younger sister Ivy the day I departed from Atlas Academy. She stayed behind in Argus and took over our father’s fishing business when he retired.”

He stared down a photo of a young woman on his Scroll, too unfamiliar lush green eyes gazing back at him amidst a youthful face unfairly aged by time and the harsh whims of the sea and winds. Strands of messy brown hair escape her yellow coat’s hood, battered by the salty breezes. 

“I wonder what she must’ve thought when she gave me the pin. It’s a little on the nose, don’t you think? Matching my name and my Semblance and all… Maybe she was proud of me for being the first one in my humble fisherman’s family to get into a Huntsman Academy. Or maybe she expected me to take up my father’s trade and perpetuate the family business instead, as the eldest son. Who knows, maybe I should have been my father’s heir, and she should’ve been the one to be able to choose her own path. But my Semblance must’ve thrown a wrench into things, and I was the one who ended up leaving home for crazy adventures while she was stuck in Argus as a fisherwoman. My fortune might have been someone else’s misfortune… I don’t know, I just think she looks older than me in this photo, even though she’s supposed to be my little sister. And a little… jaded? Maybe I’m just imagining it, not that I would know anything.”

The bird nuzzles its head into the back of Clover’s hand at the words, the Operative finding not unwelcome comfort in the smooth caress of slick black feathers. 

“And this handkerchief,” he points to a rolled up sliver of red fabric laid atop his folded uniform next to his bed, “was given to me by the twins, my youngest sisters… Nymphea and Lily.”

He pauses to appreciate the strange taste of the names rolling off his tongue, names of family members he has no recollection of. 

“Look, they even embroidered my name in the corner. Ironwood says Nymphea is studying to be an engineer, she’s been recruited to work on upgrading Argus’s defense wall at large when she graduates. Her name is quite a mouthful, and I wonder if I had a nickname for her. Maybe Nymmie? Phea? Why do neither of these sound familiar?”

His corvid companion gives a wave of both wings, the closest approximation it can manage to a shrug, and the Ace Op really starts to wonder if his friend really understands his meaning.

“And Lily actually came to Atlas Academy too, according to this photo. James even singled her out to be in this special student team… PXCL, by the looks of it.”

He scrolls past a number of images to pause at the picture of four girls in grey school uniforms, formally smiling at the camera. The team name has been labelled in black print beneath the photo, but none of the names ring any bells to Clover. The bird inches closer to the Operative’s Scroll as if recognising someone on the screen, but doesn’t seem to react further.

“But if I’m to believe this note, the team was disbanded after the Fall of Beacon, and Lily moved back to Argus shortly after that. Now she’s a successful ballerina and engaged to one of her former team members. Seems like she didn’t want to be a Huntress after all… But would you believe that? My baby sister’s got a fiancée already, she’s so much ahead of me. Or at least I wouldn’t think I have someone, since no one visited my bedside declaring they were my spouse or something. And here I thought I was supposed to be the lucky one in the family. Life as an Ace Op must be too busy to have time for relationships.”

Clover ponders for some instants, distractedly petting the crow’s feathery head as he tries to connect the dots in his head. His hospital room was as filled with flowers as it could possibly be in times of war and siege, but the only one, save for his mysterious bird friend, who’d been visiting regularly was the General… who’d blushed at Clover just as much as holding his hand… could it be…

“General Ironwood’s been visiting me though… Do you think he and I had anything going on, before I almost died and lost my memory? He sure is a good-looking man, and strong, and powerful… uh, birdie? Everything all right?”

As if offended, the corvid chokes on the leftovers of Clover’s dessert still sitting on his tray, frantically batting its wings while sputtering crumbs all over the blankets. The bird seems to have had enough of the Ace Op’s antics, it appears, for it flies away not much later, not without stealing the remainders of Clover’s apple pie slice. 

“Wait! Come back, that’s mine! I wanted to save it for later! Oh well… And yet they insist on saying I’m the lucky one.”

* * *

The next time the crow visits, Clover can’t curse his luck, because the bird turns into a man. 

Clarification: the bird turns into possibly the most attractive man Clover has ever seen, jet black hair sprinkled with silver in stark contrast with planes of ivory skin, crimson eyes turning pink when they capture the golden sunlight filtering into the room. As the man catches his breath, leaning against the windowsill, Clover can only admire how his slender, toned arm muscles ripple against the fine fabric of his shirts, how artfully he slouches on those long, lanky, utterly endless legs…

“Nice Semblance,” is all the Operative can come up with in his puzzled state, which seems to surprise the shapeshifter more than anything.

“Look, I’ve only come to tell you that I’m gonna walk in through the door in my human form in a few minutes, I just don’t want you to freak out when I walk in, I’m not some random stranger, just your friend the bird guy, you know, the one who stole your cake, okay?”

Whichever part of Clover’s mind is still working takes some time to process the rapid stream of words and extract any shred of sense from them. Did this gorgeous guy listen to all of his embarrassing ramblings all along in his crow form? How awkward must that be? What happened to his clothes when he shapeshifted, how did he make sure they were back on him? Not that Clover would mind seeing him without his garments… Why would the shifter need to leave through the window and walk back through the door if he’s already here?

“... that was _my_ cake,” he mutters under his breath.

“That’s what you choose to focus on? Seriously?”

And before he shapeshifts back to fly out the window again, the dazzling bird man makes sure to punch Clover in the face with such strength he sees stars.

* * *

“What was that for?” the Ace Op bemoans, still rubbing his rapidly bruising cheek bone. 

“Okay, that wasn’t the smartest thing,” the gorgeous shapeshifter shrugs, walking in through the door with his arms behind his back. “I was hoping that’d help your memories return.”

“This isn’t how it works.”

“And how does it work?”

“... I don’t know.”

“Thought as much.”

The tall, dark, mysterious stranger stares at the tip of his shoes for a few thoughtful seconds with the same adorable timidity his bird form displayed, and Clover’s healing heart melts at the sight. 

“So why did you have to walk in this time rather than fly through the window like every other time?”

“Oh, I wanted to give you this.”

And withdrawing his hands from behind his back, he holds up a small puppy that immediately smiles at the soldier, eyes wide open and tongue sticking out. Instinctively, Clover reaches out his arms, only for the animal to pounce straight onto his lap, too close to his bandaged injuries for his comfort. Adjusting his reclining posture with a grunt, he tentatively pets the canine’s head in small, regular strokes, noting its fluffy pom pom tail wagging with excitement. 

“I knew you’d be good with dogs,” the shapeshifter comments, his deep, raspy voice suddenly reminding the operative of his presence. “I’m not really a dog person, my brother-in-law just needed me to keep his dog while he was on a school trip, and my sister passed by to leave the pup with me. She just dropped him here like a letter in the mail and left... long story. I only need someone to look after Zwei today, I’ll be on a mission and James… well, James is… a little obsessed with control and doesn’t want to have a pet messing up his quarters and shedding hair everywhere on his nice white clothes.”

“I can imagine that. I can also imagine I was a dog person… still am, I mean.”

“Dog food’s here, by the way. And sorry for bringing you a dog to a crowded hospital in times of war. And sorry for punching you.”

“No, thank you for bringing me a dog to a crowded hospital in times of war. It really helps with the isolation and all of that. And he’s a lovely dog. Right, are you a good boy? Are you the goodest boy, er… Zai?”

“Zwei.” 

“Yes Zwei, yes you’re a good boy, yes you’re the best doggo ever.”

The puppy’s gaze oscillates before the flabbergasted bird man and the recovering captain, each mention of his name making his head turn to the side in recognition. 

“Where is the name Zwei from, anyway?”

“Patch. It’s a reference to… I don’t think you’d get the reference.”

“Unfortunately not,” Clover reflects, recalling that he has no memory of anything pop culture related.

The thought brings renewed pain to that dark gash not only in his body, but also in his mind, that black orifice where something is _missing_ , and everything hurts. He reflexively hugs the dog closer to his chest, and the warmth radiating from soft fur eases the pain from his wound, eases the emptiness in his mind. Rather than dwell on that, the operative decides to change the conversation topic. 

“Did you have to walk through the door instead of the window because you couldn’t bring Zwei here in your bird form?”

“That’s right, I can keep inanimate objects on me when I shapeshift, like my clothes, but live things… don’t try to imagine what that’d be like if Zwei and I ended up merged or something. Heck, it was pretty hard with clothes at first, to make sure that they stayed in the right place and didn’t mysteriously vanish.”

“I wouldn’t complain if they did,” Clover judges, and regrets immediately, cursing himself for not being able to filter his words after spending most of his time alone just talking to himself and visiting birds. 

“Ahem,” the shifter clears his throat, a rather cute blush spreading onto his pale cheeks, “I’d better get going. Mission awaits. I’ll come pick Zwei up in the evening.”

***

Clover must have been asleep when the ruggedly handsome stranger comes to collect the dog. When he wakes, he only notices a faint ghost of warmth on his bandaged chest, before a nurse barges in and promptly admonishes him for animal hair all over the pristine white blankets. 

The next time the shapeshifter visits, they play cards. Clover wins. And the time after that, too. Not that he remembers any of the rules. That must be his Semblance finally kicking in. Maybe a good luck Semblance isn’t so ridiculous after all. 

* * *

Clover keeps winning against James as well. 

After a few rounds of cards, the General wonders who taught him to play, and the Ace Op says a little bird told him. At that, Ironwood suddenly stiffens, even more so than usual. 

Clover deduces that James doesn’t like luck games. He deduces that James doesn’t like probabilities because he can’t control them, but that he still plays cards with Clover because that’s something his subordinate used to like, and that’s the headmaster’s way to show he cares. 

* * *

“You didn’t tell me you were Qrow Branwen, the legendary huntsman, professor at Signal Academy, two-time victor of...”

“Are you going to list all of my made up titles, or did you want to ask a question?” Qrow interrupts gruffly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

They’re walking the dog around this little patio in the middle of the hospital - a square of grey concrete surrounded by white columns and a peaceful fountain in the centre. In the distance, some nurses push patients on wheelchairs around the yard, paying no mind to Clover and Qrow. The injured soldier walks slowly, grateful for the huntsman’s grip, trusting the living legend’s ability to catch him if he falls. 

“Why does it matter? Would you have treated me any different if you knew I was some kind of celebrity to you?”

“No, of course not. I would just have asked for an autograph. Apparently I had a poster of you in my room back at the Academy, must have been a big fan.”

“Must’ve been an older photo then. From my Vytal tournament days, perhaps. These days I try to avoid photos so I won’t get recognised on my spying missions. My bird form helps a lot with that, but sometimes to collect intel you have to… y’know… _talk_ to people.” 

The operative lets out a low chuckle at that, leaning into Qrow’s slender, sinewy arm more than necessary. Ahead of them, Zwei tugs impatiently on his leash, short legs rebounding on the stone floor with endless excitement. 

“How did you figure out, anyway?” The shifter wonders.

“James talks about you a lot, you two must be quite close. He seems to trust you a lot, after all you two go way back, since you were both working with Ozpin. James mentioned ‘Qrow was on a mission’ on the day you left Zwei with me, that’s when I started to suspect it. Also, the turning into a bird thing is a little on the nose given your name, don’t you think?”

“You’d make a decent detective,” the huntsman teases.

And the small grin that graces his features steals Clover’s breath away - somehow he intuitively knows this smile is as rare a warm sunny day in Atlas, to be cherished and treasured just like each of the shiny things his crow friend brought him. 

“But what really confirmed your identity to me is this, behind your back. The storage form of Harbinger. May I?”

As the shapeshifter seems too taken aback to stop him, the soldier gently reaches for the handle at the small of Qrow’s back, feeling the roughness of the red leather wrapped around hard metal. Clover’s eyes must have been trained to appreciate the beauty of weapons, for he can’t help but gape at the sharp edge of the steel blade, at the intricacy of the clockwork that controls its transformations, small wheels imbricated into larger cogs, all perfect, all efficient. His fingers find a switch on the handle, expanding the weapon into its sword form which he thrusts forward carefully with both hands, examining the remarkable balance of the blade…

“Clover!” Qrow shrieks like a wounded bird. 

And before the injured captain can react, not that he’d been opposing any resistance, the huntsman wrenches the weapon out of his hands and pushes him into the nearest column. Qrow’s fingers tremble violently around Harbinger’s handle, the sword soon clattering to the hard floor with a loud metallic clang. A hair’s breadth away from the tumbled blade, Zwei flattens both ears reflexively, cocking his head to the side in concern. Reassuringly petting the dog with one hand, Clover carefully considers the shapeshifter, unsure whether to pick up the weapon, unsure how to address the huntsman in his state of disarray. 

“Qrow? Can you hear me? Say something.”

But the mesmerising crimson eyes still stare frantically at the floor, refusing to meet his aqua gaze. Feeling powerless, entirely too powerless, Clover’s heart clenches at the sight of this wonderful man, this legend he’d apparently spent his life admiring, utterly unravelling before his very eyes.

“That night, on the tundra… the last time someone else wielded my… my sword… it was to… Clover, I...”

When Qrow’s voice breaks off, the clearly traumatic memories are but lone stars in a jet black sky, and Clover must trace back the constellations if he wants to understand what really happened. He wishes to uncover the truth, but judging by how overwhelmed the shapeshifter became at the mere recollection of those events, the Ace Op isn’t too sure he really wants to know, right here and now. No, all he wants right here, right now is for Qrow, his brave, beautiful bird, already so strong for saying what he just said, to be alright.

“It’s okay. I know that you’re not okay, and that’s okay too. You’re safe now, I’m here with you, for you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

As Zwei nuzzles tentatively into his leg, the Ace Op realises that’s too much exertion for his recovering body, and drops down to the nearest stone bench. 

“C’mon, just sit down with me.”

Stupidly, he reaches out for the older man’s hand, surprised when Qrow actually accepts and flops down to a sitting position next to him. Grasping the shapeshifter’s wrist with his fingers, Clover feels waves of relief wash through him at the sensation of Qrow’s erratic heartbeat decelerating back to a normal pace. 

“Feeling better?”

“I’m sorry.”

They both stop awkwardly after starting to speak at the same time, just their luck. A light blush spreads on the huntsman’s cheeks, while Clover just appreciates how adorable the legendary warrior looks when he’s flustered. 

“What did you want to say, Qrow?”

And he pauses for a second to consider how the bird man’s name rolls off his tongue, foreign, exotic, and yet tasting right, feeling right, stirring something deep within him he can’t yet remember. In the expectant silence, the crystalline rustle of the fountain calmly echoes around the patio, water trickling down like time flowing by, surely, slowly.

“You’re the one who almost died,” the huntsman says, “and yet you have to deal with comforting me. Sorry for being pathetic like that.”

“You’re not pathetic. You must’ve seen traumatic things, things I don’t remember, maybe even things I can’t even imagine. You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve survived it all. That’s not pathetic, that’s actually pretty amazing.”

“Thanks, but I wish… I wish I could tell you...”

But Qrow’s voice - his raspy, velvety, beautiful voice - falters after that, unable to carry on under the weight of the memories he wants to reveal.

“I also wish you’d tell me what really happened to me. But you’ve been through a lot, and just talking about it hurts. Heck, I bet even just thinking about it hurts. I get that. I want you to tell me, but only when you’re ready. Until then, I can wait, okay?”

“‘kay.”

“I’m sorry, it was foolish of me to take your sword. I’ll be more careful next time. Just tell me whenever something I do crosses a boundary and triggers something that hurts you, all right?”

The shapeshifter nods, momentarily distracted by the puppy pouncing onto his lap and chewing at his vest buttons.

“By the way… is this okay?”

The operative looks down at Qrow’s hand still held in his own, and as a response the older man firmly intertwines their fingers, and right now that’s more than Clover could ever have hoped for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, my boys holding hands! ;)
> 
> Team PXCL (pronounced ‘pixel’) was an experimental team composed of Penny Polendina, Xanthene Xototl, Ciel Soleil, and Lily Ebi. The team was disbanded after Penny’s destruction during the Fall of Beacon.  
> Ivy Ebi actually appears in my most recent one-shot for Fair Game week (Day 3: weapons/family), so if you're curious feel free to have a look. I’ve seen this around in many other fanfics so of course I can’t claim ownership of that idea. 
> 
> Writing this was easier than I thought it'd be, especially easier than the things I've come up with for Fair Game week. Working with this kind of prompts is actually really hard for me, but it's still a crazy and wild ride (check that out on my profile if you're interested) and I love to see how others filled in the prompts.  
> Because I'm doing FG week, I'm expecting to be posting the next chapter of this some time next week, likely around Wednesday. (Everything's on lockdown where I live and a lot of things got cancelled so I got more time than previously thought to write, but staying inside all day is pretty nerve-wracking.) Anyway, stay safe and posted xx


	5. Like a trail of breadcrumbs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Qrow-centric chapter… and what’s that? The first fight scene in the fic??  
> Warnings: Qrow has another bout of PTSD (but the others are there to help), brief mention of bird eating worms

“Think you can keep us with us, old man?” Harriet winks, lightning straying from the corner of her eyes. 

“Shhh, not like you can teach the old bird new tricks,” Qrow quips back, stepping next to her as she kicks the airship door open. 

“All right team, go! Go go go!” she shouts, ushering her teammates with a wave of her hand before jumping out of the plane and into the void. 

Still standing in the plane, Vine silently nods in encouragement. In another military airship, Winter wordlessly glares at them, sword in hand, while Marrow and Elm are already shooting at flying monsters. Drawing Harbinger in one smooth motion, the shapeshifter follows, plummeting down to the Grimm-infested transport ship below. 

After relentless insistence from Qrow’s part, James had finally allowed him out on missions, mostly to defend airships bringing food and other supplies up to Atlas from other parts of the kingdom against Salem’s raids. Since the Ace Op captain was still recovering and the team were used to having a fifth member with a probability-altering Semblance, the General unsurprisingly assigned the scythe-wielder as Clover’s replacement. Formally, Harriet was named field commander during Clover’s absence, but Qrow’s reputation and experience easily earned the respect of his new teammates. After all, it’s not like they’re in a position to refuse his help - in these times of sieges, they do really need all the help they can get. 

Landing onto the side of the attacked vessel with a sputter of sparks, the speedster immediately races off on the oblique metal surface, punching off any monsters on her way. With a somersault, she avoids a razor-sharp Teryx beak diving for her midsection, before grappling the creature’s long neck and swinging it off the transport and into the cold thin air. Mid-flight, she executes a hand-command, immediately prompting Marrow to activate his Semblance. 

“Stay!” he orders, causing the Teryx to freeze in mid-air, for just long enough for Qrow to cleanly cleave it in two with his scythe as he lands.

Tumbling onto the freight ship next to Harriet, the shapeshifter collides with Vine’s extended Aura hand pushing him back to a flat spot where he can secure his footing - even though not needed, the help is welcome, allowing him to save energy in the freezing morning air. Even before his feet meet the surface, he’s already converted his weapon into a shotgun and taken down a flock of Nevermores. The acting team leader nods at him before they each dash in opposite directions. 

Adrenaline flowing through his body, Qrow fights like a dancer, his tonfa tracing complex curves around him, piercing a talon, slitting a throat, breaking a wing - soon the aerial Grimm surrounding him are but vanishing clouds of soot. Still, he keeps his eyes peeled, aware that he’s partnered with a speedster that could dart before him at any moment - he’s enough used to fighting alongside his niece to be conscious of that risk. Therefore, he’s not too surprised when a giant Manticore lands before him and Harriet appears in a burst of lightning before him, shielding him from the creature’s fiery breath while trying to hold its jaws closed with her exo suit. Reflexively, he tackles her to the side before the Grimm can attack, causing both of them to lose their footing and nearly fall off the plane. Only his blade, planted into the hull of the airship, stops them from falling off to a certain death as he securely clasps her hand. 

“You know you’re damaging the cargo we’re supposed to protect, right?” she sneers at him, brushing her nose. 

“I just saved you, bunny. Try to be more grateful next time.”

“Watching our backs is what you’re paid for.”

She kicks an approaching Griffin without even looking, causing it to collapse into a rain of dark particles. As Qrow wonders how to throw her back onto the plane, Vine’s Semblance swoops in and drops her right atop the Manticore. Her strong thighs waste no time to lock themselves around the monster’s neck, causing it to stand up on its hind legs, wings flailing in an attempt to shake her off. At her signal, Timber’s rockets bore multiple holes into the Grimm’s feathers, while Fetch slices off the stinger before returning to Marrow’s hand. Qrow only has to swing himself from the handle of his sword to end up before the creature and cut its torso off its waist with a single swing of his broadsword. 

As he catches his breath among the collapsing clouds of Grimm remains, Elm lands by his side, her emerald roots preventing her from falling as the plane trembles under the monsters’ assaults. Swinging her hammer, she propels Marrow toward the remainder of the creatures, increasing his momentum as he prances around the cargo ship’s wing, shooting and slicing at his enemies in a flurry of slashes. Qrow’s heart clenches as the wing creaks under the rookie’s boots, causing him to slide backward and stumble into thin air - before silver glyphs appear below his feet, allowing him to jump back to a safer position with a thankful salute toward Winter, still watching them from her plane. 

The Faunus throws Fetch again, clearing out half a dozen monsters before a large Nevermore manages to catch the weapon in its beak. As he freezes it with his Semblance, Qrow extends Harbinger into scythe mode and swiftly beheads it, using the butt of his weapon to deflect the tumbling boomerang back to Marrow. 

“Thank me later, kiddo,” he breathes as the canine soldier spins around with an oblique slash, connecting with a handful of smaller bird Grimm.

Ending up back to back, Qrow and Marrow make quick work of the creatures surrounding them, swinging, parrying, and blocking with agility as the opponents’ numbers dwindle rapidly. When the screech of a Griffin alerts the shapeshifter’s ears, he swivels around to uppercut the monster before it can touch the young Faunus who leans backward acrobatically to dodge. Using Qrow’s back as a springboard, Marrow sends both his feet flying toward the Grimm’s face before finishing it off with a stab of his bladed boomerang through the head. Among the falling soot, Qrow witnesses Harriet catching Thorn, thrown at her by Vine, in one hand, while her other arm pins down a monster for Elm to obliterate with Timber. With the bladed weapon between her feet, the speedster spins around the hammer’s handle and promptly beheads the remaining Manticore. 

From beneath them, menacing growls and flapping wings echo as more dark creatures soar toward them, quickly deflected by a horde of Beowolves summoned by Winter that fall like kamikaze dragging the Grimm with them to a certain death. 

“Ready for pick-up?” the interim captain calls out with a thumbs-up sign. 

Winter and Vine, still standing from the sidelines on their respective airships, activate their Semblances to collect the rest of the team off the cargo ship and back to the military planes they flew in with. While Winter produces a white Manticore for Marrow and Elm to ride, staggering slightly on her feet in the aftermath of her numerous summons, Vine’s translucent hands reach out around Harriet, apparently oblivious of the Teryx diving in his direction. 

“I’ll join you later,” Qrow announces, jumping straight toward the approaching Grimm. 

“But how are we gonna pick you -”

Harriet’s words are cut short by a puff of feathers as Qrow shapeshifts in mid-air, correcting his trajectory to end up just above the rising monster. As soon as he transforms back into his human form, he thrusts his sword toward the monster’s chest, only for the colossal white beak to deflect it into its wing. As Harbinger tears through the leathery red skin and flesh, the huntsman and his opponent both plummet through the air, spinning away from the airships overhead. Cold winds whistle past the shifter’s ears, and all he can do is hold onto the hilt of his sword, the blade being held by the monster’s beak with a sickly sound of bone raking against metal...

“Qrow?” Harriet calls out through comms. “Qrow, can you hear me? Can you move back so Marrow can use his Semblance on the Teryx?”

He can hear, in fact. But it’s too risky, even if Qrow manages to regain his sword afterwards, the Grimm is too far from the Faunus operative and moving too much for it to be able to work, and even if it did his Aura is bound to be running low. 

“No, you guys go on ahead, I’ll catch up with you,” Qrow barks at his comms. 

He’d have expected the field commander to scold him for his insubordination, for not playing by the rules like the rest of Jimmy’s toy soldiers. But instead she whispers uncertainly to someone else, probably Vine, before eventually answering. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Qrow...”

He can’t hear very well, because he’s too busy painstakingly dragging his blade, still clutched by the Teryx’s beak, to angle the point straight at the monster’s throat. Before the Grimm can react, he presses a switch on Harbinger’s handle, and the sword flips into its scythe mode…

“... because I want to trust you… Qrow? Qrow, are you still there?”

_ “I trusted James with my life, I wanted to trust you...” _

The sentence ripples through his mind, echoing always, like a never-ending rhyme...

Too many things happen at once, but none of them matter. 

One, the scythe blade pops out obliquely from the Grimm’s neck and skull, killing the creature from the inside. 

Two, the monster beneath the shapeshifter’s body vanishes into filthy dust, and Qrow falls. 

Three, his bird brain attempts to take over, its survival instinct intimating him to turn into a crow and fly away, but all his body can do is metamorph back and forth frantically, his human mind spiralling too fast, too far out of control... 

But none of that matters, because all Qrow sees in the shadow theatre of his closed eyelids is the sunrise, that beautiful sunrise on the tundra…

_ “I trusted James with my life, I wanted to trust you...” _

_ A regret, a promise perhaps… cut short.  _

_ The sickly sound of Harbinger slicing through flesh, through bone… _

_ On the frosted tundra, the pristine white tundra, a splash of red, too much red… _

_ A pin dropping amidst the silence, stained in red, like a flower fallen too soon… _

Specialist Schnee’s pale hand grabs his own and throws him onto a summoned Manticore’s back, but he can’t feel it, he feels nothing…

_ “Someone has to take the fall...” _

_ “James will take the fall, I’ll make sure of it...” _

_ The flying city, floating imperturbable before his eyes as his whole world crumbles... _

All Winter has time to do is lift him into Vine’s awaiting Aura hands before crash-landing with her summon into their airship’s bay, her Aura shattering on impact. 

_ “Good luck...” _

“... you hear me? Qrow? Can you hear me? Please...”

_ “Good luck...” _

The words resonate through his ears, but they make no sense, a motley collage of out of tune syllables colliding somewhere at the back of his mind. 

_ “I wanted to trust you...” _

“Qrow. Look at me. It’s me, Operative Zeki. I’m here. It’s over.”

And it’s all over, the shapeshifter’s safely crouching inside the military airship, Harriet quickly closing the door behind him. Yet, Vine’s hands are still around him, his monocord voice speaking softly. 

“Qrow. You have to breathe.”

The Aura hands are but an extension of Vine’s body, and they have the same rough calluses, the same intricate fingerprints, only enlarged. The irregular texture feels rough,  _ real  _ against Qrow’s skin, and slowly he remembers how to breathe. He can feel the way each line circles around his body, and that’s almost distracting him from his flashbacks. This is real, this is now, and the heavy blanket of Vine’s Aura is shielding his mind from the world, from his past, from himself. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. He can’t be sure if Vine’s ordering him or if his crazed mind is telling itself. But somehow it starts to work.

“Are you feeling better? Can you answer me?”

He’s pretty sure Vine uttered the question multiple times before he’s recovered enough to speak. To say something. Anything. 

“I… I need a drink.”

While Vine retracts his Aura hands slowly, carefully, Harriet cocks her head and shoots Qrow a skeptical look. 

“Of water,” he amends quickly, just as the speedster tosses a bottle into his hands. 

He drinks in quick gulps before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, simultaneously making a mental note to buy one of these portable water flasks. He had his liquor flask before, but since giving that up he hasn’t actually had much time to go shopping for something that didn’t remind him of his drunken days and could still carry water to avoid getting dehydrated on the field. He resolutely glances at the floor, avoiding her pink gaze as he returns her the bottle. 

“Thanks, bunny.”

“Harriet hates that nickname,” Vine informs him flatly.

In this instant, Qrow’s infinitely grateful that Zeki isn’t one to beat around the bush. 

It takes a dozen minutes for the ships to return to Atlas, allowing the Huntsmen to follow the short path connecting the military airport to the academy. 

“I’m famished,” Marrow bemoans. “Anyone wanting to drop by the mess hall before briefing?”

“I might not have time,” Winter pants, jogging slightly on her high heels to catch up with him. “I have a meeting with the General in forty minutes.”

“Your Aura’s down, it’ll recover faster if you eat, even a quick snack,” Elm points out sympathetically. “Don’t worry, I can join you so it’s not just you and the rookie.”

“That was impressive,” the Faunus adds, “how you were able to make so many summons in so little time out there...”

“You were very efficient in saving Huntsman Branwen,” Vine concurs, “I could not have seen or reached him from my position on our ship.”

“Thanks for the save, Ice Queen,” Qrow sighs heavily, his hands deep inside his pockets. “You too, Vine. You can just call me Qrow, y’know.”

“Yes, Hunts- Qrow.”

In truth, he’s grateful for Vine’s help in more ways than one, but his mind’s too tired to elaborate in words. 

“You want to come to lunch with us?” Marrow prompts loudly, too loudly to Qrow’s taste. 

“Nah, I’ll be fine. After all, we did all of this for what? To save a week’s worth of food supplies from falling into Salem’s hands? I’d rather save it for you youngsters, you still need to grow.”

The Ace Ops chuckle at that, before their field leader comments. 

“It’ll be less than a week, now that we have all the people evacuated from Mantle to feed.”

“Now they’re staying in Atlas too, we can’t exactly let them starve,” Marrow says, his tail oscillating hesitantly from side to side. 

“It’s not our business, the General should manage how rationing goes,” Elm replies. 

“Yes, General Ironwood is managing everything so we don’t have to worry about it,” Winter agrees, “and focus our minds  _ on the mission _ .”

She shoots an icy glare at Qrow at those words, before the rookie can intervene. 

“I think it wasn’t intentional from Huntsman Br - I mean, Qrow, to space out like that. It looks clear something external triggered his panic attack, right?”

As the others look at the canine soldier as if he said something stupid, i.e. the way they always looked at him, Qrow ponders on the descriptor Marrow chose for his … incident during their aerial battle. Panic attack - labels aren’t like band-aids, sticking a label on one’s condition doesn’t really help it heal away. But at least it sounds less scary, like he’s not alone going through this, since a term was coined for that. The more proper fancy term would probably have been a bout of PTSD, not that Marrow would have known what was going on in his head to suitably diagnose it. 

“Sorry Qrow, can I buy you lunch to make up for it?” Winter offers.

“Don’t feel like eating… I’ll catch up with you guys in the briefing. See you later.”

As he strays from the path to the mess hall, exhaling in relief at the sounds of the large group’s noisy conversation fading into the background, fast footsteps echo behind him as Harriet appears at his side in a flash of sparks. 

“What, wanna give me a slap on the wrist for disobeying orders and endangering Winter’s life?” he shrugs, too wary to find anything more snarky to say. 

“I wanted to apologise.”

“You… you couldn’t have known.”

And that’s true, he hasn’t told anyone the details of what happened that night on the tundra, Clover still doesn’t remember, Robyn was unconscious at the time, and nobody knows where Tyrian vanished to. 

“I mean, about blaming you for cracking the ship’s hull.”

“Oh.”

It hits Qrow at that point that she doesn’t realise she caused his PTSD, because a number of other things could have, as far as she’s concerned. Instead, she must be talking about that mean joke about him being paid to save their lives. 

“Yeah, kid, that was in poor taste.”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You could’ve almost died. The adrenaline makes us say stupid things, do stupid things even. We were lucky your slip up didn’t hurt anyone this time around.”

“You’re starting to sound like Clover.”

He runs a hand through his hair at that, her remark hitting a little bit too close to home.

“And bun - Harriet, don’t ever think you’re less than because you needed to be saved. You’d have done the same in my place. Heck, if you hadn’t tackled me out of the way that Manticore’s fireball could’ve hurt me. Watching each others’ back is what Huntsmen do in times of war when lives are at risk, not just because we’re paid to do so. But because we’re Huntsmen, and that’s what Huntsmen do. You and I aren’t friends, you and your team aren’t even friends yet, but you’ll get used to that if this siege lasts any longer.”

“Thanks, Qrow. And you can call me Hare, it’s okay, Marrow does that too. Like Harriet’s too complicated for him or something.”

“Well, have a good meal, Hare.”

And as he shapeshifts and flies away, it occurs to him that he didn’t apologise for insubordination, and she didn’t apologise for triggering his panic attack… all in all, it seems like they both still have some apologising to do. 

His first intuition as a crow is to find some food by digging out worms on a nearby patch of grass. At least, Salem’s siege won’t prevent him from finding that. But after that short lunch, he isn’t sure what to do, instead gliding around aimlessly. The team briefing shouldn’t happen in a few hours, so he still has time before him. In his drunken days, he’d have taken a swig out of his flask to avoid his responsibilities, but now his way of remaining weightless, even if for a few minutes, is to fly around in his bird form and let his bird brain take the reins. Everything’s so much easier this way. Ruby would’ve scolded him, forcing him to turn back to his human self to do whatever adulting he’s supposed to do. After all, his pipsqueak was sounding more and more like Summer day after day… until he’d lost track of her after his imprisonment. 

Of course it’d occurred to him that Ironwood still doesn’t want to send him to Mantle missions, likely in fear that he’d rejoin with team RWBY or the Happy Huntresses. While he could fly down to Mantle right now, it would take him substantial time to find them in the big city, even admitting they were still there, and James would notice his absence and deduce that something’s amiss. And he can’t start to imagine how the General would react when he realises Qrow, the last friend he thought he trusted, escaped from his control and ran off with some outlaws… no, he couldn’t do that to Jimmy, to his Jimmy, they were both too… early on their paths toward recovery to risk something like that. 

Instead, his wings take him to another ‘friend’, someone he can check on without being noticed, without bringing about dire consequences. When he reaches her cell window, Robyn’s seemingly talking to herself, staring vaguely at the city below, at silvery Atlas and gray Mantle. He’s surprised that she’s still here, that she hasn’t tried to make her escape yet. Only when he leans in closer to the glass can he make out what she’s saying, and who she’s speaking to. 

“So what d’you think, Volts? Think you’re genius enough to repair what you’ve broken?”

“Switching the heating system in Mantle back on is the flip of a switch, dearest Robyn,” Arthur Watts drawls from the neighbouring cell, Qrow being practically able to hear his moustache twirling. 

The Huntsman doesn’t know Watts personally, but from what he heard from James, including that the man negotiated a deal with Qrow’s own sister, doesn’t exactly sound like high praise of his character.

“A flip of a switch that can save so many lives, yet no one’s bothered to do it. I wonder what the few Huntresses and Huntsmen fighting down there in Mantle are thinking, whether it’s worth pushing back the Grimm if everyone’s going to freeze to death anyway.”

“Can’t they just start a fire or something?”

“They have, in multiple places...” her eyes narrow to scan the city on the ground, and the avian spy wonders whether to fly away to take a look, but he’s too curious about the remainder of the conversation. “But Dust fires are dangerous and hard to control, that’s exactly why the heating system was built in the first place.”

“I know, I designed it.”

“Participated in designing it, you pretentious brat.”

“It’s not by insulting me that you’ll get me to help you. Not that I can do much to help from my cell without even a Scroll.”

“I can break you out.”

Qrow shudders at that, beating his wings rapidly not to fall off the window’s narrow ledge. 

“What tells you I want to be broken out? I’m safe as long as I’m here, and James trusts me to design plans for his new agricultural facility, I’ve got plenty of fascinating work to do...”

Quickly fluttering over to Arthur’s window, the shapeshifter notices him peering over maps drawn in pencil on large sheets of white paper. At least Jimmy has been lucid enough not to let the hacker’s hands anywhere near anything electronic.

“My team and I can protect you from Salem, and let’s face it, the food’s so much better in Mantle than in this prison.”

“If you say so.”

“Look, Volts, I can promise you that I’ll break you out and keep you safe, if you give me your hand I can swear on my Semblance.”

“I wasn’t aware it worked that way,” he shrugs. 

“You don’t get to tell me how my Semblance works,” she snaps, hitting the wall with clenched fists. 

“Fine, I’ll do it if you stop pestering me afterwards,” he shrugs, storing his pencil behind his ear.

From his expression, Qrow can tell Arthur believes in this whole Aura oath idea, not that the corvid has any idea how it could work either. 

“Wise decision, Volts. I’m sure you won’t regret it.”

Her hand reaches through the metal bars of her cell while the disgraced scientist skeptically imitates her, their fingers meeting just outside their cells. But before their palms can touch, Qrow’s eyes, ever attracted to shiny things, would swear they could detect metal reflecting sunlight… Robyn’s brooch?

“Ow, you pricked me?!?” Arthur exclaims, holding his hurt inside his fist while watching the skin turn an angry violet colour.

Qrow knew her pin was much too small to be considered a threat, the needle being too short to pick the Atlas prison’s high-security electronically controlled locks. Of course she’d have planned that they’d have let her keep it... and consequently poisoned it to prick Watts with it.

“My brooch contains a poison I was planning on taking myself if I were interrogated and tortured. With the small quantity I gave you, it’ll take you… a week or soo to die, I reckon? In the most excruciatingly painful way? The antidote is at the Happy Huntresses’ hideout anyway.”

Outside the window, the little crow can’t contain its excitement at seeing the self-proclaimed genius scientist, his jaw metaphorically on the floor after being outsmarted by none other than Robyn Hill. 

“I’ll help you! I swear you’ll do anything you ask!” he calls out, staring in disbelief at the purplish-blue tint spreading alongs the veins of his shaking hand, visibly already throbbing in pain. “Just promise me you’ll give me the antidote first!”

“Why should I? The pain won’t bother you too much if it’s just a flip of a switch to turn the heating back on.”

“Then just promise me you’ll help!”

“What’s the use of that? I could just be lying, you told me my Semblance didn’t work that way.”

“You deceitful wench! Could you -”

“It’s not by insulting me that you’ll get me to help you.”

Qrow chuckles at seeing her air-quotes, as much as birds can chuckle.

“Robyn, please...”

“I said I’d stop pestering you, so I won’t answer that. I usually keep my word.”

Leaving the irate engineer’s windowsill, Qrow judges he doesn’t have that much to learn from the conversation any more. He considers signalling his presence to Robyn, but he can’t be certain that entering in contact with her won’t signal Watts and others of his presence, which may end up endangering her. Not that she seems to have it all planned out, anyway…

Flying away, he decides to look over the city fires the politician mentioned before heading to the team briefing, using his keen corvid’s eyes to discern the burnt or still-burning spots across Mantle. The scorch marks spread in misshapen circles, looking eerily familiar. And his crow’s eyes, always drawn in by shiny things, can’t help but trace the line that connects the fires from oldest to most recent, following the path like a trail of breadcrumbs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I trying to redeem Harriet? Really? ...Maybe. She’s still annoying, but at least we get more insight as to why she’s behaving that way… or at least, in my headcanon. Same goes for Robyn, I just found it funny if she could use how annoying she is to work in her favour, if you see what I mean (I don't dislike her per se, I just think she's wasted potential in the show). I hope you like my take on Vine, I didn’t have that much to go off of and I hope I did him justice. Yes, I was thinking about weighted blankets when I wrote the scene with his hands - I don’t know if they’re supposed to help with PTSD but personally just having a heavy textured blanket on me helps a lot with anxiety, calming down, and focusing on the present in general. I’m not saying it will work for everyone, I haven’t read anything saying so, but it’s my personal experience so do what you want with that.   
> Still not much of an update schedule, updates have been sparse lately due to Fair Game Week. Sorry for that, and if you’re interested you can check out what I wrote for the prompts on my profile ;) Next chapter is Ironwood’s POV. Stay safe and tuned xx


	6. Like a secret garden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: very brief mention of suicide ideation (literally half a sentence). Otherwise, just a lot of talking, fluff, and dog cuddles.
> 
> I didn't realise a couple of chapters back that I forgot to enter the chapter title while posting it, so now that's fixed. Hope you enjoy :)

There is a gunshot. 

A single gunshot, echoing amidst the void. Amidst the silence. 

There is a gunshot. 

And the boy falls down the vault, down the void, down the silence…

There is a gunshot. And that is all. 

James jolts awake, cold sweat beading his skin and metal brow as he struggles to catch his breath. He sits up tentatively, looking around to remember what’s real, what’s now, what’s a nightmare, and what’s in the past.

“I shot him.”

It sounds so neutral when he voices it, so devoid of weight or emotion. He’s so used to repressing it, to brushing his personal feelings aside for Atlas, for the greater good. He’s so used to holding his head high and his back stoically straight no matter what, to push forward no matter what, just so he can push back Salem another day. He’s so used to having so many duties as the leader of the Atlesian army with the war and all it implies that he doesn’t have time for his emotions. Emotions that only awaken in his nightmares, tenfold as vivid as he can remember them.

“Who?” Qrow grumbles half-awake, a ringed hand clumsily latching onto Ironwood’s arm from the other side of the bed.

“I’m not sure...”

Every time in his nightmare, another face looks back at him from the other side of the gun’s barrel, staring in shock before tumbling into the darkness. Sometimes it’s Ozpin disapproving his approach, sometimes Clover disbelieving his betrayal, sometimes Qrow reaching out for him one last time, sometimes even Ruby, her silver eyes brimming with fear… but most times it’s just himself, James himself as a boy, innocently granting him a disappointed glance before falling, falling always… 

Did he shoot the last fragment of himself when he shot the boy down in the vault? Is it too late for James now? Is he broken beyond repair, beyond redemption? Is he just a hollow shell now, a human carcass dragging its rusty robot parts around until the day of his death? Is it too late for him to save himself? But Qrow’s rings feel cold against his forearm, and their scalding touch feels real, feels like now. That’s real, and everything else is a hallucination haunting his exhausted mind. That’s real, and that’s all that matters right now, Qrow’s touch, Qrow’s iron grip that prevents him from falling again, falling further, spiralling into insanity.

“... Oscar.”

“I was wondering where he was,” the shapeshifter yawns. “I thought he went with my nieces and the other kids.”

And that sounds too neutral too, as if Qrow were too tired to do anything about it now. And it pains James to see the Huntsman in this state, the Huntsman who’d saved Remnant countless times by his side, too wary to do much more than survive to see another day, too wary to keep track of what happened to everyone he cares for, everyone he loves, everyone he lost and hasn’t lost yet. 

“Qrow, I’m sorry I woke you. Just go back to sleep.”

They still have a handful of hours before sunrise, a handful of hours to catch up on sleep after countless sleepless nights due to James’s work and both their nightmares.

“I just need some air,” the General adds. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

Mechanically, revelling in the simplicity of robotic routine, James grabs his coat on a nearby chair as he slips out of bed and onto the balcony. The icy Atlas winds bite at his face, but he’s too used to it by now for the cold to ease the numbness of his soul even the slightest bit. The city glistens under the full moon, ivory towers ambitiously reaching toward the sky and beyond. _His_ city, his kingdom, his to protect, and he failed, and now he has to take the fall. His quarters, a perk of his job, sit atop one of the highest towers, and the fall would at least be a long, beautiful, dreamlike journey… He barely notices as a flutter of feathers, black against the darkness of nighttime, flies past his eyes and Qrow materialises by his side, sitting on the balcony railing with his back turned to the void. 

“Nope, you won’t get rid of me so easily,” the scythe-wielder says, shivering slightly in the dead of night. “Even if you push me down the balcony, I’ll just fly up again. But you haven’t done that so far, so I guess you’re not bored with me yet. By the way, if you want to talk, I’m here.”

“Thank you, Qrow. You almost sound like Clover, you know. In a good way.”

“I might have picked up some tricks from your favourite lucky charm.”

James can’t tell if he hallucinated Qrow winking at him just now, through the obscurity and the haze of his fatigued state.

“Operative Ebi is recovering well, physically. The doctors say he may resume light duty around next week, try out some simple missions. That should help him have something to focus on.”

“And mentally? He’s just peachy?” Qrow snorts.

“He’s forgotten a lot of things, with the trauma of his near-death experience. All that because I...”

“Jimmy...”

“You don’t understand. I’ve known him for so many years, I should’ve known he’d...”

“Jimmy, stop. It’s not all your fault. It’s not all my fault. It was just a series of unfortunate circumstances, and I don’t think my Semblance even has anything to do with it, just my own stupidity.”

“You don’t sound like you believe yourself.”

“So what? Maybe I’ll repeat it until I believe it. With my luck, I’m used to things not working on the first try.”

Qrow’s words echo in the silence, in the cold darkness that means so much more than words can ever convey. But James can sense it in the frail warmth emanating the other man’s skin as he fearlessly turns away from the void beyond the balcony, the timid promise that he’ll never stop trying, never stop moving forward even if only darkness and silence answer his efforts.

“And here I thought”, the General finally says, “that all we had to do is keep on trying until we stop Salem, no matter what we’d sacrifice to get there. Now I’m not so sure anymore. There’s so many things to worry about.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact we’ll run out of food supplies after a while, especially if we do raise Atlas into the upper atmosphere. And that even if we found the Winter Maiden and got her to open the vault, we don’t even know if the Whale won’t be able to reach us there. I’m thinking of throwing the staff out into space, out of Salem’s reach, once the city gets over the stratosphere, and then landing Atlas with whatever Dust we have left...do you think that’s what Ozpin would’ve wanted?”

“I thought you wanted to try a new approach.”

“I also thought so, until I realised I was following his contingency plan blindly, in my panic and my paranoia.”

“Oz was everything to me, yet he was never perfect. He’s just a human who’s lived more lives than the rest of us, who’s been broken more times only to reincarnate again. I wish you’d just listen to your heart instead of thinking of what he’d think and what he’d do.”

“You really trust me? To take decisions with my heart?”

“After all you did?” that shifter chuckles mirthlessly. “I’m still trying to. You know I don’t give up so easily.”

“Thanks, Qrow. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

And that doesn’t magically fix James, heal his heart, or make him whole again. Qrow doesn’t trust him yet, doesn’t forgive him yet, and it’s uncertain whether he’ll ever be able to. But it’s a start, and that’s better than nothing.

“If that makes you feel better… I punched him too.”

The General ponders for a while, wondering whom the shapeshifter is talking about. 

“... Clover?”

Qrow almost falls down the balcony at that, and James reaches out to catch him before he steadies himself. 

“I meant Oscar, when I found out about Oz’s secret. I thought we were talking about Oscar. If that helps you feel less bad about shooting him. You’re not the only one who’s mad at Oz...”

“Why should I feel less bad that we both hurt an innocent child?”

“How do you know about me punching Clover?” the Huntsman counters, staring into the distance instead of answering the question. 

James deduces that Qrow doesn’t know either, but somehow it still irrationally eases his aching heart, because they’re both a mess and maybe they can help each other out. 

“The day you were on a mission, Zwei disappeared from my apartment and Clover ended up with a bruise on his face and dog hair on his bed.”

“Right… I wanted to help and took a gamble. That was stupid of me.”

“Indeed.”

The shifter chuckles briefly, and James would do anything to hear that sound more often.

“You know you’d make a great spy, Jimmy? You’re very perceptive.”

“And you’d make a good General… maybe. You’re not so obsessed about things being under your control.”

“At least I’m okay with dogs staying indoors for a while where I live…”

“I told you Zwei can stay here as long as one of us is here to… Qrow!”

James takes a shocked step back at warm arms suddenly wrapping around him, as the Huntsman slides down onto the balcony to take him into a tight embrace. Qrow’s arms are too thin under his pyjamas, barely bringing any warmth to the headmaster’s body, but it still feels nice, causing his troubles to vacate his mind momentarily as he focuses on the soft feathery hair caressing his face…

“Sorry, you just looked like you needed a hug,” the shapeshifter supplies by way of justification.

Ironwood doesn’t need to reply, doesn’t need to speak for a while, taking in Qrow’s earthy scent, Qrow’s stubble tickling the crook of his neck, his steady respiration grounding him like an anchor amidst all the chaos, keeping him afloat like a buoy as the city seems to drift in the sky…

“You look cold,” the General judged after some time, noticing the goosebumps on the shorter man’s skin. “Wanna go inside?”

“Why not?” the Huntsman sighs, pushing the balcony door open only to almost trip over a corgi rubbing its body onto his legs. 

Qrow and James awkwardly sit on the bed, taking the canine between their laps so they can both pet him, eliciting soft contented pants. 

“So you still don’t want to tell me what your sister said when she brought Zwei here?”

“Just that Tai was busy taking the Signal kids on a school trip to Forever Fall, and he needed someone to keep the dog. And other things too, but I made a promise. They’re… personal things.”

“You don’t have to tell me… not yet, anyway. But I appreciate your honesty.”

“It’s not like she would have said ‘I know you feel like a mess so here’s this cute dog, hope it makes you feel better’. She’d never admit to emotions like that, she’d say emotions make one weak.”

“You are inferring that was what she was thinking. So she does care...”

“Her Semblance allows her to sense it when people close to her are in sorrow or distress. And while she’s too hellbent on power and control to show it, it’s a facade, and she can’t stop herself from feeling empathetic.”

A tightness forms around James’s throat at the thought that he and Raven Branwen aren’t so different, that her wanting power for her tribe, wanting control over her brother sounds eerily similar to Ironwood’s desperate desire for power for Atlas... It doesn’t help that the former tribeman likes to surround himself with people like that, no doubt to relinquish control, to surround himself with people who’re so toxic to him. A playful yap from Zwei draws him from his dark thoughts, prompting him to fondly rub the dog’s head.

“You do have a heart after all,” Qrow murmurs, leaning his head against the General’s metal shoulder.

“And here I was trying to prove that to you...”

Wrapping his robotic arm around the Huntsman’s slender shoulders, James draws him in to press a soft kiss to Qrow’s forehead. The shapeshifter emits a rather adorable surprised huff, causing the puppy to leave his lap and roll onto the crumpled blankets on the bed. 

“Think we should follow his lead and go back to bed?” Qrow suggests, flopping onto the mattress by the headmaster’s side. 

“Not a bad idea,” James recognises with a wry smile.

In the semi-darkness, he can almost discern Qrow smirking at that, because frankly, who wouldn’t smile at James ‘control-freak’ Ironwood, headmaster of Atlas Academy, commander of the most powerful military flotilla in Remnant, following the lead of a short-legged black and white pup when it came to choosing bedtimes?

“You wanna take this side of the bed, Jimmy? There’s the doggie, I think you’d like that.”

And James can only concur, lying down with Zwei pressed against his legs. He should go to sleep soon… after all, tomorrow’s a long day. 

* * *

James knows it’s going to be a long day when his alarm goes off. Qrow growls in his sleep, rolling over to bury his head in the General’s pillow and forcing Ironwood to push him aside before he can squish Zwei, still fast asleep on the bed. The shapeshifter doesn’t look that peaceful in his slumber, just absolutely exhausted, and James can’t resist leaning in for a quick peck on the man’s pale, stubbled cheek. 

Heading to the wardrobe where all his identical uniforms are lined up, he checks his Scroll with one hand for the day’s schedule, without forgetting to send Qrow a brief reminder of the mission he’s got planned with Marrow two hours from now. That should be enough time for the Huntsman to deal with the cute case of bedhead he’s got here, the General judges. 

But in the meantime, Ironwood has important duties to attend to, like a certain top-secret experimental facility to visit.

* * *

“Stay!” Marrow calls out.

The gigantic metal grid heaved in Vine’s Aura hands stops in mid-air, hovering perfectly still. At that cue, Harriet elastically jumps off the ground, dashing across the steel surface to deposit a myriad of identical, transparent earth pots onto the plaque, each onto its dedicated, well-aligned slot. From the ground, Elm keeps throwing her more pots, many pots at once with her remarkable strength, and the speedster keeps using her Semblance to catch them all, positioning them in a flurry of sparks. Her teammate’s vines help her down as she lands, just in time for him to pick up another grid, lining it exactly above the previous one, and the whole routine starts again, only rhythmed by the sounds of clinking metal and Marrow’s regular shouts. 

“General Ironwood, Sir,” Harriet finally greets when she lands, somewhat unsteadily in surprise at her superior’s sight, while Elm quickly helps her back to her feet. 

So that’s James’s master plan - using his best agents to rapidly build a facility for what essentially amounts to mass farming. Urban, high-tech, precisely-calibrated, finely-tuned, express mass farming, granted, but still, farming. Each seed from Atlas’s seed bank is given an optimised amount of space, soil, water, artificial heating and lighting not to suffer the whims of stormy Atlas weather, safely indoors and away from any insects and parasites the winds may carry, all to maximise the crops’ growth rate and nutritive yield. All of it, carefully crafted following Watts’s plans, in an entirely man-made environment that can be controlled electronically to the utmost microscopic level.

The General wonders what Oscar and Ozpin would’ve thought about that, now their souls started to merge… not that Ironwood cares, it’s more important for his people to be able to feed in times of siege, and later on in space, than to worry about what others think. 

“Greetings, Ace Operatives. I have only come to check the progress of operations. Any problems to signal?”

Harriet taps her foot in thoughts, lightning emanating from her bobbing shoe.

“Specialist Schnee has been visiting and using her time dilation to make the plants grow faster so we can get more seeds more quickly. She may be spreading herself too thin with her Semblance use. I saw her Aura break in combat during our last mission.”

“Thanks for letting me know, Operative Bree. I am wondering if anyone else would be able to help.”

“I would, Sir, but I can only locally stop time, not fasten it...” the dog Faunus cuts in, “I mean, make it go faster… speed it up? You know what I mean. So it wouldn’t make the seeds grow faster, which is the opposite of what we want… sorry.”

His voice trails off as Operative Ederne nudges him in the arm rather strongly, looking down at his feet rather than at the General’s piercing blue gaze.

“The Schnee Semblance is not unique,” James reflects softly. “I wonder if Mrs and Master Schnee would be able to help. After all, getting a self-sustainable food source quickly would be for the benefit of all of us in Atlas.”

“If we found Huntress Weiss Schnee, do you think she could aid us?” Vine asks, tilting his head slightly while still focused on his work. 

“If we found Huntress Schnee, we’d probably also find the silver-eyed girl, and the Winter Maiden, and...”

“Penny,” Marrow says. 

“Yes, the Maiden, and...”

“Her name’s Penny. She’s a real person. I saw it in her reaction at Robyn’s election party when...”

“Yes, Penny... of course,” the General comments distractedly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Permission to speak freely, General?” Harriet calls from overhead, juggling plant pots between her hands. 

“Granted, Operative.”

“As much as defending food transports and developing the agricultural facility is important, shouldn’t the Ace Ops be down in Mantle tracking down Penny and Salem’s servants that are still there? As far as we know, Tyrian escaped custody, and Cinder’s still at large...”

Cinder. James blinks, and the slender silhouette of the black queen chess piece remains imprinted on the back of his eyelids. Cinder, who took control over his entire army. Cinder, who walked to his office unnoticed to leave a token of her presence…

“General?” Elm speaks uncharacteristically softly, a glint of concern in her voice. 

Of course Cinder’s a concern to James personally since her exploits at Beacon, and Tyrian’s a concern just for what he did to both Qrow and Clover alone, but these are personal matters, and he shouldn’t let his best specialists catch onto his intimate worries. He should be the one worrying for them, for his army, for the people of Atlas, not the opposite.

“Our primary concern is to keep the city alive under siege, so the Ace Ops’ top one priority should be this facility. Remember that it has to remain a secret to the general public, so I can’t hire any more people to replace you here while you’re away. Atlas has never grown any crops internally, instead importing everything from Mantle and further afield. Now if word spreads out on our new farming facility, people will begin to panic and think we want to take the city out of the atmosphere to exist in complete autarchy. The panic will only serve to attract the Grimm on the people of Atlas.”

“Isn’t Salem here anyway? So aren’t the Grimm attracted… anyway?” Marrow wonders, running a puzzled hand through his hair. 

“This is illogical, General Ironwood,” Vine voices flatly. “With Salem’s whale hovering in public view, citizens of Atlas already know that we are under siege and that the Grimm prevent us from importing edible goods. So the construction of an agricultural facility only appears as a solution to a known public problem.”

Qrow or anybody else would called James paranoid or idiotic for his judgement, and in this moment the headmaster is glad Vine isn’t Qrow or anybody else. Vine just speaks his mind bluntly, without letting his emotions cloud his reasoning, and right now it’s all that Ironwood can ask for. Vine’s right, the facility shouldn’t be a secret garden.

“Well, I’ll think about it,” he concedes to his subordinates. “Callows and Fall should not be a concern when we lift Atlas out of the atmosphere. As to Penny, I can think of people more appropriate than the Ace Ops to lure her out.”

It has become common knowledge that Penny and Ruby are close friends, and James is keenly aware of the fact that Ruby hangs around with that whole gaggle of young Huntresses and Huntsmen Qrow had dragged with him to Atlas. So many people, and therefore, so many ways weaknesses that can be exploited… He could use Winter, Willow, or Whitley to get to Weiss… or use Robyn as leverage to get to the Happy Huntresses, who likely know about the kids’ whereabouts… So many possibilities, and yet this was the only way… the only way he could think of to peacefully regain control over Penny, to obtain access to the Staff, and save humanity from Salem.

“If I may, some of us can go down in Mantle with Qrow, and he’ll find a way to get in touch with his nieces,” Harriet proposes. 

“No… not Qrow, he’s too...”

He’s too precious, he means too much to James, he can’t possibly be sending Qrow, his closest friend, his last friend, his only friend… perhaps more… 

“... unpredictable,” Ironwood finishes quite pitifully, hoping his best Huntsmen and Huntresses won’t notice. 

Qrow would probably have scoffed at that… what would Qrow have thought? More generally, what would he have said about the whole plan? That it’d be inhumane to lure in children using their loved ones? That if James is unwilling to use Qrow, then it’s unfair to use anyone else? That James has lost his heart and his mind, and that there must be another solution? 

But whatever solution Qrow or anyone else would have to propose would be messier, less peaceful, more chaotic, less controllable… and James wouldn’t be able to stand an uncontrollable outcome. This hostage trade of sorts was the only solution, the necessary solution, yet he can picture Qrow’s irate crimson eyes considering his idea coldly… And Clover, or at least the Clover he used to know, would have told him the same in more polite words… Maybe he is really losing his mind. The General shakes his head, sensing the rapid onslaught of a headache. 

“I will talk to Operative Ebi and Huntsman Branwen and let you know when I have a solution,” he concludes, rubbing his temples with distraught fingers. 

“Yes sir,” a chorus of voices vaguely echoes. 

“Keep up the good work, Operatives,” he says with a small wave of his hand before exiting the facility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One step forward, two steps back? James is still paranoid and coming up with really sketchy ideas, but at least he’s starting to question himself after his chat with Qrow. And Vine’s blunt enough and Marrow’s naive enough to call James out on certain things, I love Vine more and more each day. RWBY's worldbuilding is weird, just don't think about it too much. Basically the farm will allow Atlas to grow food independently, which it didn't seem to be able to do before (closest real-life parallel would be Iceland, where they import everything except bananas that they grow in geothermal-energy heated greenhouses... also fishing, but Atlas being in the sky can't do much fishing so they import that from Argus...). Next update around Wednesday-ish? I don’t know, I could get used to that kind of Saturday/Wednesday update schedule again… let me know what you think. Until then, stay safe, warm, and posted xx


	7. Like everything's a game we play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late, was busy writing a grant and then this chapter just wouldn't write itself...
> 
> Shout-out time:  
> \- to Dappercat420 who pointed out that Ironwood doesn’t actually plan to send Atlas to space, only into the upper atmosphere… Space sounds cooler but as y’all know it raises some plot holes, such as Dust won’t work any more. I changed that one line in the previous chapter, thanks a lot for the clarification!  
> \- and to Affinity_for_Misfortune who wrote super useful comments about their experience with PTSD and also sent me some photos of their service dog Chief, wow thank you so much, tbh that made my day. Chief is such a superhero and seems like an all around cute and adorable good boy.  
> If anyone else wants to send me photos of their dog, by all means please do, I love dogs and would never get tired of these… Also fanart (related to the fic, to RWBY, or to anything else you want to share) is more than welcome. You can reach me at elzie DOT rav AT gmail DOT com. Happy to share artwork and give more shout-outs in future chapters! Ughhh is this a sign I need a tumblr/twitter/smth?? Sorry I’m just overwhelmed right now (lockdown bright lights loud noises too many loud noises)…  
>   
> Warnings: we finally figure out how James lost half his body, tiny Cordo cameo  
> Flashbacks in italics, you know the drill now

“Quit holding back and fight me like you mean it? Or are you too worried you’ll hurt me?” Clover teases, beaming at the General as his fishing line dances around him in graceful arcs, easily deflecting the bullets Due Process shoots in his way. 

As James continues to take potshots from behind one of the training room’s columns of teal-lined cubes, the Ace Op leader closes in progressively, his footsteps echoing over the background of deafening gunfire. To force the headmaster to face him, he throws his hook to wrap the line around the piled up blocks concealing Ironwood and gives a swift tug, causing the column to collapse in a tumble of black blocks. 

Aqua eyes stare intently as James swivels around, executing a roundhouse kick in the same smooth motion that sends a large cube flying straight toward Clover. The Operative barely has time to bend down and dodge before realising the block was but a distraction, as James catches Kingfisher’s cable and drags it toward him using his metal arm. The sudden impulse leads his subordinate to lose his balance and stumble forward, right in time for the General to spring straight ahead, propelling himself with the violet plume of a gravity Dust bullet before swapping his grip on his weapon and striking Clover with the pistol’s butt in the nape of his neck. 

Grunting as he hits the cold black floor, the team captain loses no time in pressing a switch on Kingfisher’s side that retracts the line and hook, converting the weapon into its spear form just in time to block a swing of James’s fist. Even with his still-recovering arm, the General is a force to be reckoned with, and Clover is very much aware that his superior had multiple openings to shoot him in the chest since the beginning of their spar, only refraining from doing so in fear of worsening his bandaged injuries. Still, that doesn’t explain how reluctant to attack him the headmaster has proven, especially since he was the one to suggest they should train together. Something intuitively tells Clover James needs someone to talk to rather than train with, and this is the way his boss usually communicates. 

Spinning his weapon in a rapid flourish to block bullets as he scrambles to his feet, the Operative ponders whether to interrupt the duel, relishing in the flow of adrenaline released by his return to action too much to want to stop. For the first time since awakening in hospital, he feels right training with James, finally at his rightful place amongst this world on the brink of collapse, finally doing something even marginally useful. Twirling his weapon’s rope before tossing the tip out like a grappling hook, the captain heaves himself atop one of the columns, prompting his superior to vertically dash up another stack of blocks using the recoil of his Dust rounds to accelerate his run. 

Clover grins as the two opponents exchange ranged attacks, prancing around the columns in the room while bullets and fishing line dance around the evenly lit space, tracing trajectories that briefly, brutally intersect. The captain’s infectious smile soon reaches Ironwood too, the General’s shoulders finally relaxing ever so slightly as he elastically jumps from cube to cube, the battle appearing to enrapture his mind like a game, enough to momentarily numb the worries of his tense mind. Smirking slightly as an idea forms in his mind, James angles Due Process down toward the floor, shooting the base of the column Clover stands on, the blue-rimmed block shattering on impact. 

As the Ace Op falls, adrenaline pumping faster than ever through his veins, he rolls against his shoulder to avoid hurting the middle of his injured back and gets back to his nimble feet. As plummeting cubes and debris leave him untouched, likely a product of his famed luck, his leg traces a circle, sending sparking shards to fly into his opponent’s eyes. In one fell swoop converting the momentum of his spin, he throws out his fishing line, wrapping the metal rope securely around Ironwood’s torso and ragdolling him into the nearest wall…

_ The debris of shattering Dust and rock leave Clover untouched, likely a product of his luck, as the Dust mine collapses around them. James isn’t so fortunate, and his subordinate only has time to wrap his fishing line around Ironwood to toss him out of the way of a falling Dust shard that could’ve been lethal.  _

_ “Lucky you I got you, huh?” the younger Specialist pants, catching his breath in the thin, Dust-charged subterranean air.  _

_ “I believe that’s more skill than luck, Clover,” James comments, disentangling himself from Kingfisher while dusting off his white uniform, guns still in hand. “Thank y-” _

_ Before he can finish, a loud growl resonates through the whole network of interconnected caves, causing the floor to tremble and more Dust stalactites to detach from the ceiling.  _

_ “Admiral Cordovin, this is Ironwood,” James calls out through comms, “the Leviathan is approaching our location -” _

_ “Has the last charge been set?” the Admiral bellows back, her voice interspersed with bouts of static with the limited bandwidth in the depth of the mines.  _

_ “Affirmative,” Ironwood replies as they check on Clover’s Scroll that the land mine they set just around the bend of the tunnel is still functional and active. _

_ “There is a Dust lift half a mile north-east of your location that can take you to the surface, an airship will pick you -” _

_ Before Cordovin can finish, the line is cut short by a gigantic orb of lightning sailing through the air in their direction.  _

_ A brutal push sends Clover flying into the nearest tunnel wall, the winds knocked out of his lungs as his back impacts the hard stone surface. When he regains his spirits, he sees Ironwood standing before him, or rather staggering to his feet as best as he can, pistols pointed straight at the Leviathan’s monstrous jaws opened right before them. As another ball of sparking energy already forms down the creature’s ugly throat, the gunslinger doesn’t hesitate to shoot it straight through the esophagus. James’s body, standing tall and proud staring down the colossal Grimm’s mouth, is the only thing that shields Clover from the next blast, and the last thing he sees before the lightning blinds him is his commanding officer’s Aura fizzling out from his silhouette.  _

_ “Clover, run,” Ironwood pleads as the younger man is still shaking the bright, too bright phosphenes from his field of vision.  _

_ Clover’s first sight upon recovering clear vision is his superior’s coat covered in debris and mud, too much mud to make out how much he’s bleeding underneath, how many bones he could have broken when shielding his subordinate from the Leviathan’s attack. Yet, his gloved hands still clutch Due Process as he stumbles onto one knee, jaw clenched and breathing laboured.  _

_ “But James, I can’t leave you here like this...” _

_ “This is an order, Operative.” _

_ “With all due respect, Commander...” _

_ “With my injuries, I won’t be able to run out in time, I’ll delay the Leviathan and launch the charges to finish it off when you’re far enough. We don’t need to sacrifice you too.” _

_ Using Kingfisher’s rope to deflect falling Dust shards as everything crumbles around them, Clover stands at loss for words, tears suddenly welling in his dusty eyes. This can’t be, that’s unfair, Ironwood shouldn’t need to sacrifice himself, shouldn’t have to take the fall for this operation gone south, no one should ever be left behind... _

_ “Clover… good luck.” _

(There is a gunshot.)

(There is a gunshot, but Clover doesn’t react, doesn’t even care as the resurgence of his memories wash the pain away, wash everything away…)

_ “Clover… good luck.” _

_ Yet Operative Ebi understands this is the logical choice - even if Clover had been the one to stay behind and James had managed to get to the lift, so many things could still have gone wrong, the cabin could still have malfunctioned, the elevator shaft could still have caved in… But Clover’s the lucky one, so he should be all right, should emerge unscathed at least, since he’s always the one to emerge unscathed from everything, just his luck… _

(“Clover?!” someone calls his name, somewhere far away, too far away...)

_ “Thank you, sir,” he whispers in choked tones, staring once more into deep cerulean eyes reflecting off exploding Dust before following orders. _

_ Before doing what he’s been told. And running, never turning back. _

“... Clover? Clover?” Ironwood’s tone is brimming with concern, his cold metal hand gently shaking his Operative’s valid shoulder… Why does his other shoulder hurt so much? And how did he end up sitting against the wall with Kingfisher away from his hands?

“Sorry… I must have spaced out,” he mumbles miserably, rubbing the spreading bruise on his bicep. 

“I figured. I shot you, but you didn’t react,” James replies, but the tense edge of his voice cuts sharper than the sharpest of swords. 

“Are you all right?” Clover prompts softly, surprised at his superior’s sudden concern. 

“You’re the one who’s been shot,” the General states, ever the astute one.

“It’s nothing much, my Aura will heal that in no time… no thanks to you,” he jokes tentatively.

“I’m sorry, I should have realised you… spaced out, as you put it. I shouldn’t make it a habit to shoot at people when they aren’t fighting back.”

Clover isn’t sure what the Atlesian leader is referring to, but he feels something more urgent is at hand, literally so as Ironwood’s fingers still clutching his arm tremble ever so slightly.

“I had a flashback of that day where we fought the Leviathan in the mines… the day where you...”

James’s features immediately relax at that, his grip loosening around the Operative’s shoulder. 

“It’s okay, Clover. We managed to set off the explosives and make the mine collapse over the Leviathan. And I survived. We both survived. I’m right here, it’s all over.”

Clover doesn’t know what to say, he needs to check for himself that this isn’t a flashback, this isn’t a dream, this is really James crouching next to him, whole, uninjured, stark white uniform still pristine...

“Can I hug you?”

The General gulps audibly before answering.

“Yes… please.”

As he wraps his arms around Ironwood’s strong shoulders, the Ace Op can sense the warm, unwarmed flesh, the cool, smooth steel under the fabric of his uniform. The prosthetic is a marvel of Atlesian technology, strong, supple, still, perfectly still beneath his rummaging fingers, perfectly… perfect, more so than his human half could ever be.

“Thank you”, the younger man utters. “You’re the one who got hurt, I shouldn’t be the one who...”

Oh dear, Clover can feel his tear ducts cluttering his eyes again… 

“Clover, I know it was hard for you too. That it felt unfair, that you felt powerless after things escaped your control… But it’s okay now, it was the right choice. You’re here, and I’m here, and that’s what matters.”

The captain feels tired, like he wouldn’t mind falling asleep right there in Ironwood’s steady embrace, anchoring him to reality, to here, to now. Yet something still feels unnatural, as if even after suddenly recalling so much, there’s still something crucial he can’t remember...

“James... General, was there something else you wanted to talk to me about?”

“It can wait till later. You should get some rest, you’re still recovering. I shall write to you in the afternoon to reconvene a meeting.”

“Understood, sir.”

Only when he leaves the training room does Clover realise that if the headmaster seemed relieved at the mention of the confrontation in the mines that cost him half his body, that could only mean that he feared his Operative could remember something else - something much worse to James, if such a thing could even exist. 

* * *

“Is this okay?” Clover whispers.

It becomes a sort of game for them, a routine on their route to recovery. They make up the rules as they go along, because that’s part of the game. 

“Yeah, that’s okay,” Qrow replies quietly, giving a slight squeeze on the Ace Op’s fingers holding onto his hand.

It’s a game, but Clover doesn’t win. At least, not yet. Because it’s not a luck game. Except it is. 

“You’re doing better today. That’s good,” the wounded soldier encourages, tentative fingers stroking their way up Qrow’s forearm until the cuff of his rolled up sleeve. 

Strong digits brush deceptively gentle lines across the smooth ivory skin, eliciting a slight shiver from the scythe-wielder who doesn’t withdraw from the touch, instead leaning into Clover’s caress if anything. 

“Doesn’t mean I’ll be doing this well tomorrow,” the shifter snorts.

And he’s right, of course, Because recovery isn’t a straight line, it’s not even a cycle, it’s a game of fortune and misfortune like everything else.

Around them, in the expectant silence, lush medicinal plants bloom, motley shaped leaves on spiralling green tendrils greeting the sun rays filtering through the glass ceiling. The heady amalgamation of spicy, exotic scents is almost overbearing, but the calm is reassuring as the two of them sit alone on a wooden bench by the serpentine path through Atlas hospital’s small greenhouse. 

Qrow had offered to massage Clover’s shoulder after Ironwood shot it during their spar, such that the Operative only found it fair to help with the shapeshifter’s sore muscles that must be aching for rest after a long series of transport protection missions. But the Ace Op can only wish for the Huntsman to let himself be touched by someone else without flinching, his lean but defined muscles visibly tense up under unusually warm, pallid skin. And all Clover can do is touch little by little not to overbear Qrow, probe that fragile boundary little by little, and try his luck in hopes it won’t break like a near-invisible cobweb between his fingers. And to alleviate the tense silence, the soldier begins narrating his day while Qrow listens mindlessly, tiredly. 

“Yes, Clover, I know about the Leviathan encounter… as it turns out, I’m the one who found James under all that rubble when I flew over, and alerted the authorities so you guys could come rescue him.”

“Wow. Talk about unlucky… your bird form must really be eagle-eyed.”

“Oz was the one who sent me there, when he sensed something was wrong with Jimmy. At the time, your boss wasn’t General yet, but he was a professor at Atlas Academy, quickly rising through the ranks, and Oz already enlisted him in his secret inner circle, alongside Glynda and yours truly. I knew James, but I can’t say we were very close back then… Well, communication between the two of us has always been a rocky road. Anyway, I did visit him in the hospital several times.”

“Oh, I must also have visited a lot… did I see you back then?”

“Don’t think so. I would just stand outside the window in my bird form and check his readings to see if he was doing better, and then fly away to drink myself to death somewhere in Mantle. I… don’t think I’d have been able to visit in my human form… I wouldn’t have been able to talk to him, to tell him I was sorry to have come too late, after he was already injured beyond recognition… It’d have been too damn hard...”

This is from a man who can take on a Teryx alone without batting an eye, and yet can’t bring himself to go on, his voice trailing off raggedly. He doesn’t need to go on, because Clover can tell what the echoing silence means. That Qrow visiting the recovering Ace Op in his hospital bed as a bird must’ve been just as hard. That mustering the courage to return the lucky pin to its owner must’ve been damn hard... heck, summoning the strength to even look at the bloody pin must’ve been so damn hard. That all the other shiny trinkets the crow brought must’ve been practice for that, apology gifts for chickening out. That turning back to a human to face Clover for the first time must’ve been near impossible, and Qrow must’ve been so brave, so goddamn brave...

“You saved his life. If you hadn’t spotted him he’d have bled himself to death without medical assistance. There’s nothing you could’ve done if you came earlier. You should give yourself more credit.”

“That sounds familiar,” Qrow snorts softly, warily. “What didn’t sound familiar, however, was that you were the one with him in the mines when it… when it happened. I never thought of that, no wonder you’d trust him with your life after that. In hindsight, you likely did the right thing. There’s nothing more you could’ve done if you hadn’t left. if you hadn’t followed orders, James would never have forgiven himself for what occurred. He’d have gone off the rails completely, he’d never have recovered his sanity alongside half his body.”

And Atlas needed James, so doing the right thing for James was doing the right thing for Atlas. But now, whether Ironwood is still the leader Atlas needs, they can’t be so sure....

“You mean it?” Clover whispers, raising a puzzled brow. 

“Trust me. I know James better than most anyone else alive knows him now.”

“I trust you.”

The raven-haired huntsman gasps wordlessly, crimson eyes widening at these three simple words. And Clover wants to tell Qrow how much he trusts him, as a man, as a huntsman, as a legend, how much he admires what he did, how much he respects how hard he fought against enemies outside and inside his head, always pushing forward amidst the storms, always seeing the hopeful lights that reflect off others no matter what. But the Ace Op can’t say so much without overwhelming Qrow, without sounding fake in his flattery. So instead, step by step, little by little, Clover settles for three simple words instead. Three words, like a game they always play, like a mantra, a map, a dance. 

“Is this okay?” 

His hand wanders up the older man’s bicep covered by his shirt, before swiping an experimental thumb along the curve of Qrow’s collarbone.

“Yes.”

It all feels unfamiliar, uncharted, and Clover can’t recall if he’s ever been this far before, mapping all the delectable details of Qrow's body. But the novelty only excites Clover further, making him wish to try his luck and see what happens if...

“Qrow, what were we before?”

“...Partners in the field,” the shapeshifter says after a while, lost in thought. 

“Right, James told me.”

“Is that so.”

Clover’s fingers barely touch the side of Qrow’s neck, sliding upward to cup his stubbled jaw in his open palm. The soldier cocks his head in a silent question. 

“Still okay,” Qrow murmurs.

“Does that mean we get to decide?”

“Hmm?”

“What we are, I mean.”

And wishing himself luck, Clover stares at expectant crimson eyes, at thin soft-looking lips… He’ll need his luck, all the luck in Remnant even, not to mess everything up, not to shatter the unstable equilibrium where they stand, not to destroy everything they’d been slowly trying to build toward trust, toward recovery. So he wishes himself luck as he softly leans in to...

“Operative Ebi? Qrow, I didn’t know you’d be here...”

“General Ironwood, sir,” Clover pounces to his feet, supplying a perfect military salute. 

Trying his best to imitate the younger man, Qrow precipitantly jolts upright next to the Ace Op, slurring his words ever so slightly as he speaks.

“James, there’s something I need to...”

He doesn’t have time to finish before lurching dangerously on his feet, red eyes suddenly hazy, fortunately caught by both Clover and James who help him back down to the bench.

“Whoa, easy,” the Operative calls out, his hands still securely wrapped around the shapeshifter’s shoulders.

“You’re burning up,” James remarks urgently, pressing his flesh hand to Qrow’s forehead. “Do you have a cold? When’s the last time you ate?”

“Yesterday lunchtime?” the shifter shrugs, one hand pressed to his stomach. 

“And yet you didn’t join my men in the mess hall, Winter told me.”

“I had some worms on the lawn… as a bird, I mean,” he adds as the other men share a vaguely disgusted look, “at least we’re not rationed on these with the siege. Better save the human food for those who can’t... do without.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that?” the General echoes, a harder edge to his voice despite the overt concern still painted over his features. 

“I saw the Atlesian upperclassmen are rationed less... severely than the citizens rescued from Mantle...”

Clover, who was unaware of that in the blissful calm of his hospital room, can’t help but repress a shudder at that. In his own opinion, they should talk it out when Qrow feels better, try to find a compromise. But now’s not the time, and Clover can’t say that he’s in a position to preach to anybody… it doesn’t help that he feels culpable, almost ashamed for what he just did, for perhaps almost abusing Qrow's lack of resistance in his current weakened state that the former tribeman had done a remarkable job at hiding. 

“And you find that a good reason to starve yourself? To the point of getting sick and going on missions on an empty stomach?” Ironwood counters icily. “If you were one of my men I’d have you discharged.” 

“‘M still not one of your men, remember?” Qrow retorts feebly, seemingly fighting off another wave of dizziness. 

“How about we get you some early dinner?” Clover suggests as both older men turn to face him.

“Let’s walk to my quarters,” James agrees after several seconds. “Think you can make it, Qrow?”

“C’mon Jimmy,” the scythe-wielder drawls. “You’re just making a fuss because I slightly tripped. You know how I always trip on my feet.”

The Ace Op is rather confused by this, disbelieving how such a competent warrior could be so unsteady with his footing, such that both Clover and James refuse to stop supporting Qrow on either side of him, despite his complaints, on their way to the General’s penthouse apartment. 

“Kitchen’s on the left,” Ironwood announces to Clover as he pushes the door open, rushing toward one of many cabinets and rummaging through the orderly drawers. “Prepare dinner while I find medication against Qrow’s fever. There’s fresh fish in the fridge.”

As the shifter already plops down to the nearest sofa, still clutching his abdomen, the operative considers the pristine white kitchen curiously, trying to figure out how to proceed, how to recall old memories of a time where…

“...I can cook?” he wonders aloud in disbelief. “What’s my signature dish?” 

And right now, that’s the most important question. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was Qrow gonna tell James? Let me know in the comments if you think you know. We’ll figure out in the next chapter(s)... but not before the boys have a domestic fluffy moment making food and having dinner ;)  
> Stay warm, safe, and posted xx


	8. Like a (human?) water bottle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we pause the plot (plot? What plot? Never heard of her…) to have just some boys making food and cuddling and a little bit of angst. And Zwei! And Summer cameo! Hope you enjoy :)  
> Warnings: mention of past alcoholism

“You trust him with that?” Qrow grunts, half slouched on the couch while accepting a paracetamol pill and a glass of cold water from Ironwood. 

“With what, cooking?” James replies affably. “Don’t worry, he used to be great at it. And I’ve seen him fight, his muscle memory is coming back fine...”

“Once he gets started making something, you mean. So far it seems like he doesn’t even know where to start, or what to make.”

“Fish soup. Or sushi,” the headmaster calls out loudly so that Clover can hear from the kitchen across the ridiculously vast quarters. 

Such are the Ace Op’s fabled signature dishes, the shapeshifter reflects, instinctively shrugging at the second option with the slightest of groans… that doesn’t escape Ironwood’s acute perception. 

“I thought you liked sushi, Qrow.”

“I did… and I still do,” the huntsman attempts to explain, “but I haven’t been able to digest raw fish so well since I was poisoned. Guess my gut never fully recovered from being corroded by Tyrian’s venom.”

“Callows poisoned you?” James prompts immediately, his expression changing abruptly as a hard, dangerous glint disrupts the careful calm in his eyes. 

And Qrow can’t help cringing inwardly, curling up to take even less space on the large couch… In the muffled distance, he can hear Clover’s voice announcing something about fish soup amongst a backdrop of cupboards and drawers opening and closing frantically while the operative tries to figure out where everything is. But Qrow couldn’t care less, because he can’t believe how stupidly, how selfishly, how senselessly he just behaved.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain about my scars, not in front of you who got a whole damn half of your body blown off in a Dust explosion, not in front of Clover who got stabbed through the chest with Har… with my… I shouldn’t complain because I was careless in a fight and Tyrian’s stinger just barely grazed me at my gut and...”

“Qrow.”

The chill metal of James’s hand cups his cheek, forcing him to look up from the boring grey patterns on the couch and into mesmerising cerulean irises, stable like an iceberg amidst the storm.

“Qrow, look at me. Please never apologise for your scars, no matter how big or small.”

And of course Ironwood would say something like that, when he’d spent so much time staring down at his own hands, at his arms, at his body that doesn’t even look human any more. When he’d spent so much time seeing himself as a monster, as scarred, as ugly in the intimacy of his own quarters, of his own mind, while putting out a cold, cordial facade for the world to see, as if he wore the scars like nothing more than a badge of honour. When he’d spent so much time convincing himself that there was bravery in the brokenness, that he did it for Clover, for Atlas, for the people, to stop Salem and the Grimm… That he was in control, that he’s always been in control, and that it was his choice to sacrifice his body, his flawed, scarred, human body for the greater good. 

But even James’s scars are beautiful, perfect like every part of him, every part of the whole down to that sleek steel band above his eyebrow. And the General would never be able to understand how much more misshapen, albeit sparser, the shapeshifter’s scars are, as a result of lack of medical attention on long missions in the wild, away from the Kingdoms, as a result of Qrow being such a mess, a drunken, stupid, unfortunate mess. 

Still, James’s words sound nice, and in this instant Qrow wants nothing more than to drag the headmaster downward and kiss him senseless, to pour his gratitude, his respect, his admiration for this scarred, this beautiful man into the searing contact… but before he can reach up toward Ironwood, a firm metal hand pushes him down softly in the abdomen, which such gentleness that it leaves him startled for several instants. 

“You know, I wouldn’t have been able to bear the pain if it weren’t for this,” he demonstrates, activating a function on his metal arm apparently powered by fire Dust judging by the red colour coding. “This is some of the finest work in Atlesian high tech.”

“James, it’s a hot water bottle,” Qrow deadpans, revelling in the slow onslaught of warmth that eases his pain as he guides Ironwood’s heating palm to the position of his scar, unbuttoning his vest so the metal hand can rest against his shirt. “Your arm’s a hot water bottle.”

Well, technically, half his body must be a giant high-tech hot water bottle, but that sounds too ridiculous to be said out loud. He doesn’t want to say anything anyway, because that would break the calm, the fuzzy, soft calm as James’s fingers gently pad his skin through the fabric of his shirt. He can’t believe that it was the same steel hand that shot Oscar, that tried to shoot Qrow without even hesitating… because right now, those metal digits are nothing but kind, tender, almost reverent in their touch, and the huntsman wants to trust them entirely, basking in the pleasant heat. 

Besides, the scythe-wielder already finds himself dozing off to sleep in James’s warm embrace, as the heat dilates every of his blood vessels around his gut, numbing the constant ache in his body. The pain’s still there, tangible, well-defined, it’s never really gone away, he doesn’t ever really remember it going away since he was poisoned and he just has to push through. But now it doesn’t engulf his consciousness any more, it’s ever so slightly more bearable and suddenly life feels infinitely better. 

Of course, getting drunk used to help with the pain, as burning liquid poured down his throat and his mind slowly ebbed away. And after he gave that up, not eating was the only way to avoid the ordeal that digestion had become, but he couldn’t keep that up for so long before his stomach cried for food and his mind and body couldn’t operate optimally on missions any more… 

...Or until he tripped straight into James’s arms. Or Clover’s. Or both. Just his luck, really. 

“Qrow? Feeling any better?” the General whispers into Qrow’s ear, his beard tickling the shapeshifter’s earlobe while sounds of chopped up herbs and simmering fish echo from the kitchen. 

“Hmm,” comes the grumbled response as the smaller man adjusts himself to rest his head more comfortably in the half-cyborg’s embrace, making sure that the warm metal hand never leaves his hurt abdomen. 

“So do you remember what you were going to tell me in the greenhouse?”

But there’s no use asking such a question now, for the bird man is already sound asleep in James’s lap. 

* * *

_ Qrow pokes one of the cookies tentatively… and promptly burns his fingertip. Swearing between gritted teeth, he rushes to the sink to pour icy water on the damaged skin, nearly knocking the tray of half-baked cookies to the ground. Literally half-baked, he notices as the ones that hit the side of the tray fold over softly, too softly for his own taste. After all, he knows Yang and Summer prefer their cookies crispy, and he doesn’t want to disappoint them, never wants to disappoint them ever again. The cold water calms some of his pain, while he quickly activates his Aura to make the small burn disappear.  _

_ Who’d have thought baking was so tricky, he thinks to himself for the umpteenth time this week. Baking’s so goddamn tricky, especially when the lights are too loud and the sounds are too bright and saturated around him. Brilliant Patch sunlight pours through the window, too sharp, too defined for his tired eyes, while the endless commotion from Tai and Yang playing some game outside chafes his sensitive eardrums. The withdrawal hurts, the withdrawal still hurts, the withdrawal is still hell, and he’s still a mess…  _

_ How long has it been now? Four months? Four months since Summer all but metaphorically dragged him away from the bottom of the bottle he’d been all but drowning in since Raven left. Try for baby Yang, she’d said, glancing at the two-year old blonde who looked up at her with wide lavender eyes like she was super-mum, no less. Try for baby Ruby, she’d said, caressing the expanding bump on her thin abdomen with a fond smile never leaving her features. He couldn’t possibly refuse, so of course he said he’d try. Two months later, he’s still trying, and it’s a battle, every step of the way is a goddamn battle. _

_ “You know you can just put the biscuits back in the oven if you want them to be harder,” Summer suggests, slumping into the nearest chair as soon as she enters the kitchen, cradling her baby bump.  _

_ “You shouldn’t be here,” he groans, considering she’s probably right since he got the recipe from her in the first place and Summer’s a wonder-baker, that comes with her super-mum qualifications.  _

_ “And don’t forget your oven gloves before taking the tray,” she reminds with a gentle chuckle as he opens the oven to put the cookies back inside.  _

_ “Enjoying the show?” he teases, fully aware of her silver eyes intently staring at his behind as he bends down to insert the tray back into the oven.  _

_ “I have to say, it’s always quite the thriller. Watching those little dough guys slowly being burnt to death, I mean.” _

_ “You have strange tastes in movies, rosebud,” he shrugs, wiping the remaining flour off the wooden counter.  _

_ From the corner of his vision, he sees her preparing some tea, fine fingers rummaging through her box of assorted tea bags while she distractedly fills the kettle.  _

_ “It’s funny, now that you’re sober I’d say you’re getting addicted to doing nice things for people.” _

_ “And you find that funny?” he slouches into a chair next to hers, gladly accepting a teacup from her hand. “How d’you know I’m not planning to eat all the cookies myself?” _

_ “You don’t even like cookies that much. Yang does though.” _

_ “Ha, you know me too well. I like to keep my trim figure rather than stuff my face in pastries, thank you very much.” _

_ “Well, that means more cookies for me then! They do look delicious!” she rejoices, tilting her head to the side, silky curls of dark hair bouncing off her slender shoulders. “And for my little Ruby. I’m sure Ruby will absolutely love her uncle Qrow’s best cookies in Remnant when she grows up.” _

_ “That’s your recipe, rosebud, so if anything she’ll love super-mum’s best cookies in Remnant. If anything, uncle Qrow would get an E for effort.” _

_ “You and Tai must be such mean teachers. You know the girls would just be so much happier to get double the amount of cookies if both you and I bake for them.” _

_ “Hmm… so it would seem.” _

_ She pours tea into both their cups, glancing pensively at the fragments of blue sky reflecting off the steaming liquid before breaking the silence. When she finally speaks, her words sound distant as if muffled by water, and he starts to wonder if this isn’t all a dream... _

_ “You know, you don’t have to feel like you must compensate for so much.” _

_ “Huh?” _

_ “You don’t have to feel like you have to do nice things to us to compensate for the fact that your Semblance does some not so nice things. Or that your sister behaved not-so-nicely. Or to apologise for drinking, or anything. None of that matters, Yang, Tai, and I just love you for you, as you are. And I just want you to bake cookies because it makes you happy, not because you feel like you have to.” _

_ “Okay… I’ll try to look happier next time I bake. If I manage not to mess up or burn myself, that is.” _

_ “Promise, birdie?” _

_ She holds out her pinkie, almost as a challenge, because she’s always been a brat and there’s no way around that.  _

_ “Pinkie promise.” _

_ And as he promised, he tries. He tries so hard to be the perfect, sober, cookie baking super-uncle to Yang, to Ruby. He tries so damn hard. _

* * *

_ He tried so damn hard.  _

_ Before she died.  _

_ He could feel it as soon as it happened. He could feel something snapping in him, and the next thing he knows his wings are flapping frantically, taking him to the place where her silver eyes finally extinguished amidst the sea of surrounding Grimm.  _

_ But of course, he’s too late. Just his luck, really.  _

_ And of course, someone beat him to it. As soon as he lands, shapeshifting back into his human form as soon as his feet meet the scorched ground, he knows that someone is already here. Someone who didn’t need to fly the whole way there, who sensed Summer’s distress in her last moments and just opened a portal to the silver-eyed huntress with her sword.  _

_ “You’re too late, brother,” Raven speaks icily, sheathing Omen as the last remnants of her portal close behind her.  _

_ “Raven...” he greets, unsure of where to go next.  _

_ He looks around, and he’s sure he’s in a dream now, because the sky is a violet storm, the ground is burnt and charred, interspersed with Dust crystals sprouting from the earth like translucent flowers, and he knows he’s never been in this place in waking life.  _

_ “You’re always too late, and you’ll always be too late. Just your luck, huh?” _

_ “How dare you? When I know you didn’t come in time to save her either, or else she’d be standing here with us right now. How dare you come here and despise me, when you left us for years, never told us why, never gave us news...” _

_ “If you knew the truth, you’d have left too. You’d have gone back to our tribe, your real family, your first family, the only one that wasn’t built on lies, the only one that matters.” _

_ “So why don’t you tell me the truth? I’m not a child any more, I was born maybe a minute after you? You don’t have to coddle me.” _

_ “If I told you the truth, you’d fall right back to drinking yourself to death like the pathetic alcoholic you are. And you’d be of no use to me. No, I prefer you to stay blissfully loyal to Ozpin, like a nice little bird caged by his lies and his secrets, so I can keep track of his plans through you.” _

_ “So this is all about Ozpin, huh? Why should I trust you anyway when you just said you wanted to use me to spy on Oz? Why did you come here? Because you really care about Summer, or just to taunt me and use me?” _

_ She looks down to her feet, clutching her sword arm awkwardly, and he realises she does care, that’s she’s probably exterminated the few remaining Grimm Summer’s silver eyes couldn’t take down before he arrived. And he realises maybe there’s still some hope for her, some light amidst the stormy darkness. _

_ “There’s nothing left of her, little brother. Nothing left to salvage. It’s too late now.” _

_ And he looks around, and he knows that’s true. There’s only a crater left, a void where she used to stand, he can’t even tell for sure, and all the Grimm are gone. There’s not even a body to salvage, not even a shred of cape floating in the wind like a last scattering petal. There’s nothing he can bring home for Tai, for Yang, for Ruby… _

_ “It doesn’t matter, Raven. It doesn’t matter if Ozpin’s hiding something, if he’s keeping secrets. Because your daughter, her dad, her sister? Those are all that’s left of my real family now. My real family that accepts me for me, doesn’t reject me for being a bad luck charm. And I’ll fight with them, for them always, no matter what you say, no matter the cost, because that’s what family is for.” _

_ He mustn’t have said that in the memory, but now this is a dream, he knows it’s a dream. And he says so because he wants to, with all the benefit of hindsight and whatnot, because it helps him feel ever so slightly better. At that time, in his real memory, he mustn’t have said very much, not that he would remember anyway, most of the month starting that day was little more than an alcohol-induced haze in his memory. He mustn’t have said very much, not very much more than ‘I need a drink’ before turning tail and flying away... _

* * *

Qrow cracks an eyelid open as Zwei nuzzles into his curled up form, drawing him from his strange… flashback? Dream? Nightmare? He isn’t quite sure, but now he’s awake, on Ironwood’s uncomfortable colourless couch, and none of that matters any more. The General’s nowhere to be seen, probably having left to fill some paperwork or run some briefing. The last he’d known, Winter was the one supposed to keep Zwei while James and Qrow were out and about, as per the headmaster’s obsession with not leaving the dog alone to destroy his apartment when he’s away. She’d been… less displeased than they anticipated at the mention of this unconventional assignment, prompt to summon a handful of miniature silvery beowolves to play with their new canine friend. The shapeshifter can only guess she must have come by to return the corgi while Qrow was dozing off. 

Either way, the former tribesman's grateful for the dog’s presence - Zwei is a huntsman’s pet, trained to assist huntsmen on and off of the battlefield, to smell trouble around them as well as inside their minds, inside their scarred minds after the endless physical and mental wounds any respectable huntsman inevitably racked up throughout their careers. Tai trained Zwei remarkably well to scent and ease his own trauma and Yang’s, and Qrow’s thankful for that, for the blonde Huntsman and his crazy ex-wife to have sent Zwei to Atlas. The shapeshifter can’t sense trouble as well as the pup can, but right now he can pick up the scent of delicious fish soup wafting out of the kitchen…

“Want some help?” he calls out in Clover’s direction while making his way through the corridor toward the kitchen, his hand still obliviously holding his gut.

“Are you feeling better?” the Ace Op asks without turning around while stirring the stew.

Even as Clover maintained his back turned to Qrow, the older man can hear the concern dripping all over his voice.

“Not too bad, the pills must’ve helped with the pain and the fever.”

“I’m almost done here, but you can cut up the bread if you like. I mean, only if you want to. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just like to feel useful, to feel like I can do something good despite… you know...”

“Despite the fact you’re still recovering after having essentially returned back from the dead? Yeah, I kinda know.”

Qrow’s words elicit an earnest chuckle from the soldier, and he can’t help but smirk as he picks up the round, flour-covered Atlesian loaf from the counter. Summer was right, he’s quite addicted to helping others as a coping mechanism, sometimes at the expense of his own person, his own health, because he’s beyond help anyway… But he doesn’t want his efforts to only cause more trouble for Clover and James, which forces him to contemplate how to slice the bread so he won’t leave knife marks or crumbs all over the kitchen, so that Ironwood won’t be mad at him…

“Oh, can you cut it into really small cubes? So we can soak them in the soup,” the operative specifies, and Qrow only shrugs, tosses the bread into the air and draws Harbinger to slice it with lightning fast twirls of the scythe blade before it even falls, right into a bowl awaiting in Qrow’s other hand. 

“Whoa,” Clover voices, turning away from the soup for a few seconds to watch the scythe-wielder rattle the sliced loaf in its bowl before throwing it upward again and cutting it along the other directions until he obtains suitably small cubes. “You know you could just have used a bread knife.”

“And have Jimmy flip his lid if I use the wrong knife and damage the blade? Or if I put flour and crumbs all over his pristine kitchen counter and floor? With my luck, those outcomes would’ve been likely. No thank you, I’d rather use my trusty weapon.”

“It’s not like James uses the kitchen much.”

“I figured. He doesn’t really have time, he just orders food most dinners. I don’t think he ever really learnt how to cook… but you know where he went?”

“Talking to some officials about the rationing injustice. He really wanted to help with that.”

“Wouldn’t have expected him to admit he’s wrong and deal with the consequences so soon.”

“He didn’t admit he was wrong to my face, but he did call them immediately after you fell asleep. James is a good man, I know it’s hard to believe, but...”

“So you think it’s not too late?” Qrow interrupts, distractedly reminiscing echoes of his dream. 

“For what? For rebalancing the rationing system? Better late than never.”

“For James, I mean. To save him… from himself. Back at the mine, when I tried to save him, I was too late, and he lost half his body. Now I sometimes feel like I’m too late again, and he’s lost his mind, his humanity...”

Like he was too late to save Amber… too late to save Summer...

“No, I don’t think that was the only time. James talks about you a lot, you know that? While we play cards, he likes to recount your old exploits when you two fought alongside one another… Anyway, he told me you saved him in Beacon from a Griffin that would’ve gotten him by surprise.”

“Oh, that?” Qrow muses, running a nervous hand through his hair. “He would’ve been able to deal with it on his own… my presence distracted him, that’s all.”

“Will you learn to give yourself the credit you deserve?” Clover grumbles, taking an experimental sip from the soup before adding a handful of herbs with clearly practised fingers. “I admit it’s cute when you’re all flustered like that every time you get a compliment, but I’d prefer you to be cute  _ and _ happy with who you are.”

Well, Qrow shouldn’t be surprised that the team captain would start flirting with him again… but this time is different, and it doesn’t feel right. The shifter can’t help but worry about the fallout, if he lets himself fall for Clover again, when the soldier eventually remembers about what happened, about what  _ Qrow  _ did to  _ him _ , and inevitably gives up on the bird man. At best, the Atlesian would want nothing more to do with him at that point, for Qrow’s beyond help, beyond hope, beyond saving after all he’s been through, all he’s done. 

The scythe-wielder knows that James feels the same culpability that forces him to keep his distance with Clover. But at least Jimmy isn’t a walking bad luck charm, Jimmy didn’t team up with a serial killer to take out the Ace Op leader, so maybe Clover has a better chance with the General…

“Maybe it was a bad question. After all, you don’t know what James was like before, to compare. James was always a great man, a force of nature, who’d never hesitate to sacrifice his body, his name, and his reputation for his people, for the greater good, for his heart was always in the right place...”

“Do you have a crush, or are you trying to set me up with him?” the operative teases, and the shapeshifter can’t tell which of the two is accurate… if not both. “Anyway, you want to taste the soup? I reckon it’s almost done.”

Qrow does his best to pry his mind away from the fact that the soldier is practically spoon-feeding him, with a pretty silver spoon held at the end of a chiselled arm, all perfectly proportioned muscles under smooth alabaster skin. Because as much as he wants to stay away from Clover for the soldier’s own good, he has to admit the man is absolutely  _ gorgeous  _ and  _ adorable _ ...

“Tastes delicious to me,” he praises, appreciating the thick warm liquid bringing joy to his stomach while the subtle spices remind him of simpler times, of the scented herbs Summer and Tai grew by the windowsill in Patch. “But you know it doesn’t bother me to eat worms, so make of that what you want.”

“That’s disgusting, Qrow,” Clover pouts. “But you love bread crumbs as a bird, so probably you’ll like it better with the bread?”

As he speaks, he all but pushes a cube of bread soaked in soup into Qrow’s mouth while the older man’s heart can’t help but utterly melt even before deft digits brush his soup-stained lips. Not that the Ace Op reacts to his flustered state, instead simply winking at the shapeshifter and picking up his Scroll as if nothing happened, just to message Ironwood announcing dinner’s ready.

* * *

“I wouldn’t have endured so much bland hospital food if I knew I could cook so well,” Clover sighs, wiping his soup bowl with his bread. 

“Show off,” Qrow scoffs, a genuine smile playing at his lips while James fidgets with his Scroll. 

“Besides, I don’t recall finding any fish in hospital meals,” the Ace Op comments, “is this fish imported from Argus?”

“It’s become a lot harder to import food from Argus since the siege started, Qrow can attest to that,” Ironwood explains. “This comes from our own fish farm here in Atlas, which is still experimental. The programme seems to have been successful so far, which means we’re ready to blow it up to a larger scale now. So the fish you just ate, gentlemen, is one of the first Atlesian fish in history.”

“I was wondering why you’d have fresh fish in your fridge, Jimmy,” the huntsman says, his stomach gurgling happily. “Since I’ve never seen you cook. Turns out you were a test subject for an experimental aquarium project.”

“Honestly, I was hoping one of you two would cook it,” the General confesses, wiping his mouth somewhat embarrassedly. “Especially Clover, who’s always been great at cooking fish. You must have picked it up from your mother, I suppose. Alcyone Ebi was a wonderful woman.”

“You know my mother?”

“You know his mother?” the Ace Op leader and the raven-haired huntsman manage to say simultaneously. 

“Alcyone came to your graduation, Clover, and she brought shortbreads for everyone. Best shortbreads I’ve ever had in my life. And canned fish from the family business that she offered to all of her son’s professors.”

“Is that the usual procedure at Atlas academy?” Qrow quirks an incredulous brow. 

“Likely not… I bet it must’ve been so embarrassing,” Clover groans miserably. 

“Can’t be more embarrassing than losing a bet to your teammates and turning up to initiation in a skirt...” the shapeshifter replies, with a reassuring squeeze to Clover’s sculptural bicep. 

“Atlas initiation is longer than Beacon’s and involves the students actually surviving in the wild for a few days,” James comments, “so you might have frozen your legs off in that skirt.”

He doesn’t say ‘nice legs’ or even ‘beautiful legs’, but his tone essentially confirms what his words suppress, and even his thick beard can barely conceal the rosy hue dusting the General’s cheeks while teal and crimson eyes stare intently.

“Not before showing off my landing strategy,” the former tribesman supplies with a playful shrug. 

“Anyway, Clover’s team found a frozen stream in the mountain, and used to fire Dust to melt the ice. Clover managed to fish in the river after that, but that also started a forest fire that decimated most of the vegetation and wildlife… we had to move initiation to another location the following year just because of your team’s antics. It was reported that Ms Marigold tried to use her force field to contain the flames, but that she only managed to amplify them somehow.”

“I thought your Semblance was good fortune, lucky charm?” Qrow teases gently. 

“It is. I was just fortunate enough to gain a lot of firewood to make a good old barbecue,” he speaks hesitantly, starting to piece the story together and recall the outcome of events as the other men giggle heartily. “It was a successful barbecue. Come the end of the initiation, the dozens of students drawn in by the fumes wouldn’t want to go back to the Academy, because the smoked fish with forest berries and the riverside camping party was so good.”

“Clover gained a reputation as a cook in his year group after that,” James adds, “so much so that team CRME was dubbed ‘Team Cream’ all around the academy. During the holidays when the school canteen was closed they’d cook for whoever was still around. One year, they must’ve overestimated the number of people around, because the canteen was flooded with crab soup, and we had to shut it down for a whole week. If you go there, you’ll see there’s still an orange line on the wall to commemorate the level the soup reached. At least it was unanimously said that the soup was delicious.”

“To my defense, I think there was a kid whose Semblance was object multiplication, and she might have gotten over-enthusiastic… but wasn’t that when I was already an officer, and doing some teaching assistant jobs during the vacation?”

“No, that was the second time you flooded the mess hall with soup.”

“There was a second time?” Qrow yelps in shock.

“The first time, there was a food fight,” Ironwood clarifies. “Lt Lagune asked your teammate Ms Ederne to be his partner for the ball, and Mr Zeki was… unhappy, to say the least.”

“Vine?! We’re talking about Vine, right? He can get angry?” the scythe-wielder asks.

“You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry,” the General warns eerily quietly.

Qrow ponders several seconds before his next question.

“And Elm and Vine are a thing?”

“Who knows?” the Ace Op shrugs, raising both hands expressively. 

“There was also that one time you stuffed a wild goose. Or tried to, I might say,” James adds.

“Elm insisted on blowing it up with Timber when it flew by Atlas. I didn’t have that much left in one piece to stuff… but that was still nice of her,” the Specialist echoes carefully, almost dreamily as if he’s still considering whether he could have imagined that memory. 

“And the outcome was delicious, the staff talked about it for weeks. Ozpin was visiting at the time for the Vytal festival, and he even suggested we installed those automatic turrets over Atlas to hunt down low-swooping birds for food purposes.”

“Or maybe Oz suggested that just to make my life and Raven’s harder, that little scum,” Qrow retorts dryly. “One of those damn turrets almost got me while I was trying to get a good view of Mantle from the sky.”

Both Clover and the headmaster smile at that, heartily laughing with Qrow at that unlikely mishap.

“Those ‘damn turrets’ are programmed with an AI aimed at recognising wild geese, specifically the fattest ones so they can be stuffed,” the General dismisses teasingly, almost tenderly. “They wouldn’t have aimed at a scrawny crow with no meat on his bones.” 

“Just my luck the AI messed up, then.”

“But at least you got a view of Mantle? And you liked it?” Clover asks, a sincerely interested light in his breathtaking aqua eyes. 

Aqua eyes that don’t miss how Qrow’s expression changes abruptly, suddenly devoid of its previous openness and light-heartedness, suddenly too guarded, too solemn, as though gravity caught up with him. Qrow wishes gravity hadn’t caught up, that he could remain weightless like a bird gliding in the lulling breeze, in the calm before the storm. He wishes nothing could interrupt this moment, whatever moment they’d been having, growing slowly, recovering slowly. He wishes this instant could have lasted forever, as immortal as a frail flower blooming in a greenhouse shielded from the outside world, from the raging elements. He’d have given anything to witness any more of this, any more of James carefreely recounting happier times, any more of Clover recalling how to cook, how to fight, recalling simple, merry memories, even regaining his old self’s signature flirtatious confidence… if only this could never end. 

He wishes he didn’t have to interrupt this precious moment by revealing what he saw over Mantle, but he knows he shouldn’t lie, shouldn’t keep it secret from Ironwood any longer. After all, he can’t afford to keep anything secret from James any more if he hopes to regain the General’s trust. He can’t afford to delay the future, he must fly alongside the storm to stay afloat, and he knows the only way is forward. 

The captain slightly leans toward Qrow in concern, and it doesn’t take long before Ironwood catches on and does the same, his features undecipherable as if his soul hanged at the edge of Qrow’s lips, at the edge of his words. But the shapeshifter can’t see that any more, his vermillion eyes staring straight through the two other men to focus on the burning circles that scarred the streets of Mantle in his memory, as if they’d always remained imprinted on his retinae. Those deformed circles he would’ve recognised anywhere since the fateful day he rescued Amber… or rather, that day he was too late to rescue her. 

“This is what I’ve been meaning to tell you, James. Cinder is in Mantle, and I know how to find her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Team CRME (pronounced ‘Chrome’): Clover Ebi, Robyn Hill, May Marigold, Elm Ederne  
> I am projecting so much onto Qrow this chapter, this was so self-indulgent lol. I can’t even stare at this chapter any longer, I’m practically bawling my eyes out (met a big deadline for my work earlier today and I’m mentally and emotionally drained, ehehe).  
> I wonder how James will react to the Cinder news… stay tuned to find out xx


	9. Like keeping your friends close (and your enemies closer)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like James, I think you’ll like this chapter. Hopefully ;)   
> No warnings that I’m aware of other than Cinder and James’s PTSD are mentioned a few times. Nothing graphic. I’m too tired to write authors’ notes so here we go.

There is a proverb claiming you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. And to James, Qrow was always kind of both. James has to work with control, and control requires certainty. Clover’s good fortune works wherever uncertainty remains, ensuring that the odds will somehow turn in their favour. Qrow’s Semblance, on the other hand, could turn the tides in his allies’ favour, just as well as his enemies’, and there is no controlling the probabilities that spiral out into chaos. 

Ironwood had never felt as safe as with Clover at his right, Winter at his left, Penny watching his back, all of them under control like a well-oiled machine… and Qrow’s mere existence throws a wrench into all the intricate clockwork. All that clockwork James has spent his life trying to build up… and it’s not even like the General minds, most of the time. Qrow completes James in many ways, dealing with the uncertainty that James struggles to fathom by bending the rules in ways that the General and his best men never could. 

Even this time, Qrow managed to think outside the box and find Cinder, the black queen who’d been so elusive for all these months that all of Atlas’s cutting-edge technology and military might could not track her down. The black queen of whom he’d only caught a sinister, snickering glimpse of in his deepest nightmares. And even this time, Ironwood can tell what Qrow wants to do next, and even this time, James cannot agree, because he has to keep Qrow close, because he has to keep his friends close and his enemies closer. 

“No, there is  _ no way _ I’m letting you go to Mantle after Cinder alone.”

The General has to keep Qrow close, within his reach, within his control. If Qrow goes to Mantle, if he decides to face a Maiden on his own like he’s already done in the past… who knows what’ll happen to him. If he doesn’t come back, if he manages to rejoin the kids, to find Pietro, Penny, the silver-eyed girl, Winter’s sister… who knows what he’ll do, and how that’ll throw a wrench into Ironwood’s plans. James can’t predict what Qrow will do, can’t tell for certain, and there’s no way he can take the risk and let him go. He can’t take the risk to lose Qrow. Can’t take the risk for his caged bird to escape... needs him alive and well, at his side, on his side... 

“He doesn’t have to go alone,” Clover cuts in, interrupting the trainwreck of Ironwood’s thoughts, the swirling of his sensations. 

“You’re not going too, Clover. You were injured, and while I’ve seen you could hold your own in a fight you are in no condition to take the damage that the Fall Maiden can dish out.”

He can’t lose Clover, not again, not so soon. Not when the operative seemed to be doing so well, to be recovering his skills, his memories, his confidence… Not when James was starting to marvel at seeing him grow again into that perfect version of himself the General had molded him to become, that perfect version Ironwood could never become. He can’t send Clover to his own death again, to an uphill battle where the odds are stacked against him, to a terrain away from his control, away from his reach…

“Who said Qrow’d be going with me?” the Ace Op says, staring wide-eyed at the two other men alternately. 

“Will you two just listen to me first instead of arguing?” Qrow groans, leaning forward on his chair to rest his elbows on his knees. “Cinder can manifest these burning rings in the floor, it seems to be part of her Semblance. After they heat up enough, they’ll catch fire or explode, leaving a recognisable mark like a broken circle. And right now Mantle has such marks in multiple places. Look at those photos - these ring shapes aren’t the product of Dust fires or anything lit by civilians.”

He gestures to his Scroll, showing a series of pictures to demonstrate his claims. Brows furrowed, Clover picks up his own Scroll to check some details that he must have read about in reports before speaking up. 

“Cinder is the Fall Maiden allied with Salem, right? Why would she be doing that? Burning down city blocks at a time like that? I understand keeping warm is a concern, but why do it on such a large scale that she’s essentially signalling her position to us?”

“She’s taunting us,” James exhales. “She’s challenging me. She probably already has the Relic of Knowledge.”

“I thought the lamp was with Oscar?” Qrow prompts, tilting his head slightly. 

“When I… last saw Oscar in the Vault, he didn’t have the relic with him. Do you think it’s a coincidence that she leaves a black queen glass chess piece on my desk, and then the lamp disappears? She’s taunting me. She wants me to attack, to send my best men after her. It looks like a trap from Salem, and I won’t give in to that.”

“I’m still not one of your men,” the shapeshifter snaps. “And I don’t need you to send me, I’m the perfect wildcard you could be using here, I wish you could see that for your own good. You can’t stop me, unless you want to tell lucky charm here to try to arrest me again?”

James rubs the bridge of his nose, unable to deny Qrow has a point. James would have taken on Cinder on his own, refusing to sacrifice any of his men before himself, refusing to let anyone else settle his score with Salem’s henchwoman who’d made a fool of him at Beacon, who’d snatched his own army from his control and used it to wreak havoc, to destroy order and peace, destroy everything Ironwood stood for. James would have wanted to exact his vengeance himself, just like he took on Watts alone, to make him pay for hacking his army, for designing that virus whose symmetric silhouette emblem still haunts his darkest dreams, still haunts his sleep-deprived days whenever he lets his guard down. 

And James would’ve stopped at nothing to get to Cinder, stepping right into her trap - nothing, except Qrow standing in his way. Qrow, whom he respects too much to push aside this time. Qrow, hellbent on saving whatever shred of humanity was still left in him, if any could even be salvaged at all. And Clover, who seems to hesitate, seemingly considering the shapeshifter’s words?

“... arrest you again?” the Ace Op echoes hesitantly, gaping in confusion. 

Ironwood doesn’t dare gazing at the younger man, at the way he blinks in understanding as he connects the dots in his mind, at the way realisation dawns in his aqua eyes. 

“You two do realise it’s not because I was grievously injured that you have to treat me like a child, right? What do you think, that I haven’t figured out by now that that big wound inside my chest is the exact same width as the blade of Harbinger? That I haven’t noticed that both of you are always practically walking on tiptoes around me, like you’re both guilty for playing a part in the events that got me almost killed? I may still not remember very much, but I’m not exactly stupid.”

No… no, this can’t be… this can’t happen  _ this way _ . James’s mind has been too busy obsessing about the day Clover would remember that he’d neglected worrying about what the Ace Op can deduce. If the news of Cinder’s presence alone hadn’t gone down so badly since Salem’s henchwoman was already on Ironwood’s mind and he’d been thinking of mentioning it to Qrow and Clover anyway, the situation seems to be spiralling further out of control now… He’d been afraid of losing Clover, his friend, his brother-at-arms, the lover he never had, to a Maiden in a battle down below. But a thousandfold worse would be losing Clover because he figured out the truth and cannot possibly forgive James should not forgive him will not forgive him will never forgive him for what he did for using him for pitting him against Qrow for sending him to his death…

The General’s fought many battles, stared down the throat of a giant Leviathan, ripped apart Grimm with his bare hands, taken down one of Salem’s servants on his own… but he cannot bring himself to stare into Clover’s eyes, to face the lack of forgiveness that would certainly dawn in these fascinating aqua irises. He cannot bring himself to face the rejection, the coldness, the pain that’ll follow as inevitable as sunrise, as inexorable as gravity. 

James can’t breathe, his hands are shaking, human palm too sweaty, metal fingers too cold to bring any warm solace to his mangled soul. He can’t even find solace in Qrow’s support, by his side the shapeshifter is shivering, utterly unravelling, and he wishes he could reach out to comfort him, but he knows better than to invade the huntsman’s personal space considering the war still raging in his mind. James can only stare at the carpeted floor, clasping his hands together so strongly they’ll stop shaking, and stammer, without looking at either of the other men. 

“Clover, if you want to fight me for what I did to you, you have every right to. If you want to leave, you have every right to. I won’t hold it against you if you resign your commission in the Atlesian army, if you deem that you cannot serve me because after all I’ve done, I’m not worthy of your trust. But please, don’t hurt Qrow -”

“No,” Clover interrupts firmly, and the General would’ve reprimanded him for insubordination if the circumstances were any different. 

What could he possibly mean? That he’d hurt Qrow that he’d leave that he wouldn’t fight James because James isn’t worth it that he’d never accept James for who he is for what he is for everything he is for everything he did… The myriad of possibilities is too much for Ironwood to handle, let alone control, and all that’s left in him is uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to fear...

“No,” the operative repeats softly, slowly. “I won’t hurt Qrow, and I won’t hurt you or leave you, James. I’ve had a lot of alone time in the hospital to think about it. I can see you both regret what happened, that you don’t intend for whatever… occurred to me to happen again. I’m trying to trust both of you. I think I can trust you, Qrow, because James wouldn’t let you anywhere near me or any of his top men if you’d personally ran Harbinger through my chest. James would rather keep you in a prison cell, in his paranoia, than invite you for dinner. And I think I can trust you, James, because I can see how Qrow trusts you, how safely he can fall asleep in your lap even though you tried to arrest him in the past, however strange that may sound. I’m trying to trust you because I can see we’re all trying to trust each other here.”

And as illogical as it appears, in a way it makes sense. Clover can trust them because of the odd way they trust each other, or at least try to. Because of the way they have feelings for one another, no matter how dysfunctionally, because they drag along so much baggage with them, so many scars both mental and physical. 

After all, each love is different, unique, etched and scarred across different patterns, and James’s feelings toward Qrow always stemmed from the adrenaline of facing this mysterious man who’s always been practically his polar opposite. The adrenaline of dealing with this uncontrollable bad luck charm and not knowing what he’ll do next, being surprised at each turn, for better or for worse, because the better moments always outweigh the worst, and he’d sacrifice anything to protect the best moments. 

Each love is unique, different after all, and James’s passion for Clover had been a regret for a paradise lost, a nostalgia for a perfection he could not achieve in his brokenness, a perfection he’d strived to protect at all costs until the Ace Op captain was broken himself… or at least, almost broken, almost shattered, and all James can do now is watch and hope for the best, for the hopeful optimism that always characterised Clover to grow back through the cracks like rogue shamrocks through fissured pavements. 

All he can do is watch, hope for the best, and support Clover, support this beautiful man who would not let anything break him, support him through trust, through love, no matter how brokenly, how dysfunctionally, with what little control, what little humanity he has left in him. 

“So you want me to let Qrow go after Cinder, as a sign of trust,” Ironwood says, lost in thought. 

He lets his words echo in the following silence, like a metaphorical hand reaching out to the shapeshifter, awaiting for him to accept it or not, respecting his hesitation, ready to respect his decision no matter what. When Qrow finally faces both of them, his crimson orbs are brimming with a mixture of self-deprecation and gratitude, of disbelieving bashfulness and unbridled admiration. And Qrow knows, and James knows Qrow knows, that it’s only a fleeting reprieve, a calm instant between tempests, a temporary truce between them that may shatter anytime if… not if, but when Clover inevitably remembers the full horror of what occurred, and the benefit of the doubt can no longer save them. And James knows that Qrow knows, because birds must know how to seize their chance amidst the storms and take flight in the ephemeral clear sky before the next hurricane hits.

“And I hope you’ll see it as a sign of trust from my part if I compromise and allow some of your men to tag along,” the shapeshifter sighs. 

A tear rolls down the corner of his eye, but he pays no mind, instead continuing with his plan as if nothing happened, and in this instant James has never seen anything as beautiful as this man, unashamed of his feelings, unapologetic for his tears, but not letting them mold him, define him, instead remaining focused on the mission, on moving forward. 

“I’d planned to ask you for support anyway on that mission. I could just have flown down myself if I were planning to do it alone. But since I want to earn your trust, you even get to pick who can come along for the ride.”

Of course, James has an obvious choice, and oftentimes the obvious choice is the right one in his mind - but he can’t bring himself to announce it to Qrow, who’s been through enough today. They’ve all been through enough today.

“... why are you two staring at me?” Clover asks after a short, awkward pause. “Are you expecting me to pick someone because my file says I’m supposed to be a tactical genius?”

Qrow lets out a low chuckle at that, much to the Ace Op’s flustered astonishment, and the General can only stare at both of them, reflecting on just how adorable they act together. 

“Looks like Jimmy has someone in mind, but judging by the looks on his face he knows I won’t like it, so he’d prefer you to break the news to me, lucky charm.”

“... Specialist Schnee? Is that who you’re thinking about?” Clover wonders, nervously tapping his fingers against the table while the headmaster marvels at the way his famed deductive mind works. “Who wouldn’t like Specialist Schnee… never mind.”

The operative’s stops sharply at the death glare crimson eyes shoot him, his paused tapping onto the wooden table leaving the room in awkward silence that James feels the need to interrupt.

“Specialist Schnee has already faced the Fall Maiden, she’s already aware of Cinder’s capabilities, which is more than most of us can say,” the General justifies. “Besides, the Ace Ops are needed here in Atlas, we can’t take the risk to send more people and leave ourselves unguarded again, in case that’s the trap Salem set out for us.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” the shapeshifter counters, “we’re not even sure there’s a trap, or that it’s directed at you for the matter. You’re not the only one here Salem wants to get to, and everything doesn’t always have to be about you.”

“How can you say there’s no trap? Why would Cinder be marking all the surface of Mantle so visible if it weren’t to lure us out? It doesn’t benefit her to do it, so who does it benefit?”

“Only one way to find out,” Qrow grumbles anxiously. “Go down there and face her.”

“If the markings are supposed to be so obvious and recognisable,” the team captain points out, “how come we haven’t noticed them until now?”

“Many of the surveillance cameras in Mantle itself have been disabled and vandalised,” James clarifies, blinking warily. “We still have drones and cameras watching Mantle from above, but we haven’t… really been looking out for that. We’ve only been searching for… other things. It doesn’t help that I’ve never seen such burnt circles before, and likely none of our soldiers have since only Qrow and Winter have faced Cinder before, and Winter has never mentioned anything of the sort.”

Neither of the other men comment anything, and the silence hurts. It hurts, because James knows this is his fault, that he’s been ignoring Mantle more than ever since Salem’s arrival. Mantle could freeze or burn to death, he wouldn’t care, his cameras only watching the city on the ground in hopes of identifying a trail of green that could signal his rogue robot who’d stolen the Maiden powers, in hopes of catching a flash of silver that’d reveal the location of Qrow’s niece and her gaggle of children, as elusive as a needle in a haystack. And yet, in his self-centred paranoia, he’d only focused all of Atlas’s surveillance systems for Mantle on finding the needle, losing track of the big picture, because all that mattered was stopping Salem, even if a few city blocks had to be ravaged by ice and by fire... 

James is too tired to think of a solution for Mantle right now, and right now he can only be grateful for Qrow and Clover not to point it out, even though it’s clear the fate of Mantle must be on their minds. They’ve all been through enough today, and that problem can wait till tomorrow… unless Qrow plans to leave earlier? 

“So, Qrow, when were you planning to strike?” Ironwood prompts, leaving the scythe-wielder to stare at him wide-eyed, no doubt wondering why the General of Remnant’s most powerful armada and his right-hand man and alleged tactical genius would turn to the ex-tribesman and spy for plans… because if that isn’t trust, James doesn’t know what trust is. 

“The circles seem to light up in different places, not particularly connected,” the shapeshifter reflects, staring at the patterns on his Scroll. “So there’s no way to know where Cinder is between successive times at which circles start burning, like now. But the next time we see a new ring of fire form, that’ll tell us where she is, and that’s when we’ll strike.”

“Are you sure Qrow’s not the tactical genius?” the Ace Op calls out, hands quizzically at his hips. 

As per usual, Clover’s perceptiveness doesn’t deceive him, and Qrow’s sense of planning and strategy is nothing to be scoffed at. His ability to ensure the survival and success of a group of eight children, including an untrained farm hand, though a journey spanning a whole continent on foot can attest to that. If only Qrow would trust himself more, trust others more, and stop blaming himself and his Semblance for everything bad that ever happens. 

“Right, since you all seem to agree about waiting now, I’ll go do the dishes,” the red-caped huntsman grunts, getting up from his chair.

“Wait, you shouldn’t -” James starts, only to be immediately interrupted.

“What, you trust me to fight the Fall Maiden, but I’m too fragile to do the dishes?” Qrow deadpans, a teasing light dancing in his vermillion eyes, a mirthful light that James would do anything to protect. “It’s not even like you don’t have a dishwasher.”

“At least let me help you,” he offers, following the scythe-wielder to the kitchen. 

“I should give the dog a walk,” Clover suggests, at which Zwei promptly recognises his cue from across the apartment, grabs his leash on the way and rushes toward the operative, merrily bouncing up to his knees. “But I guess I should get back to my hospital room afterwards, or they’ll be worried?”

“I’ll get you discharged, so you’ll only need to go back there for check-ups,” the General offers, fumbling about his Scroll to find the right form until Qrow snickers gently and leans against his shoulder, helping him navigate through the too many files cluttering his device. “You can go back to your own quarters whenever you want.”

“Thank you, James… um, General… I’ll be right back,” he attempts to salute before Zwei all but forcibly drags him out the door on his leash. 

“Think you can do the same thing for my room too? I had some belongings in there, before you issued an order for my arrest and my room access got revoked.” Qrow wonders, licking his finger as he washes the leftover soup at the bottom of a bowl. 

“That’s unhygienic, Qrow...” the headmaster reprimands warily.

“So I have some spare parts for Harbinger in there, and… Um, I don’t mean I want to leave you, I don’t trust you on your own, and I don’t trust me on my own either, but… I mean, of course I’m trying my damn best to trust me and you, but I was just thinking, if you need space...”

“Those dishes need space, they’ll never be clean if you pack them so tightly,” James retorts, wiping their glasses while the shapeshifter stacks their dishes in the dishwasher. “And now they’re too far apart. That’s a waste of space, and therefore a waste of water and power in these times of -”

He doesn’t have time to finish, because the cup in his usually deft hand somehow slips against the towel he holds and tumbles to the floor, shattering upon impact. The product of some misfortune they both know all too well. 

“Qrow, I’m sorry -”

“For what now? For my Semblance?” Qrow’s eyes flare bitterly as he pokes the dishwasher close with his foot, much to Ironwood’s barely concealed discomfort. “Everything isn’t about you and under your control, you know.”

James’s hands are shaking again, and he doesn’t want the day to end this way, on a stupid disagreement about dishes, when they’d tried to make so much progress with trusting one another… Only, his anxiety is too much, his paranoia is too much because his shoulders are wary under the weight of the world, and fighting his instincts to control everything requires him to fight against himself, against who he is and who he’s always been, and that might be the hardest battle of his living yet.

“I’m sorry for talking to you this way,” the General clarifies, sighing deeply. “It’s been a long day for all of us, and tomorrow’ll be another long day of watching and waiting for Cinder’s next sign, of keeping ourselves ready to confront her. I’ll just clean up the broken glass, my metal hand won’t get cut anyway. You’re free to leave, or stay, whenever you want. I’m resetting your room access, effective now.”

The General presses a few buttons on his scroll, a faint buzz confirming the permission change.

“Jimmy, I… I don’t know what to say.”

The headmaster knows the telltale signs, how Qrow stares at the tip of his boots like they’re the most fascinating item in Remnant, how he runs his hand through his greying, feathery hair...

“Then just tell me one thing. Is this about Clover?” James asks simply, softly.

“Why would this be about Clover? Everything’s about Clover...”

Qrow wants to say that it’s because of his… because of their developing feelings for the Ace Op leader that it suddenly feels unfair that the General and the shapeshifter are staying together, as if things could ever be unfair for a man whose Semblance is literally good fortune. Qrow wants to say he’s worried what will happen when Clover will remember the full truth. That he resents waiting for what will come, for Clover to recall what happened on the tundra, for Cinder to signal her location again, wishes they had time to form new, better memories between the three of them before all hell breaks loose. Qrow wants to say he wishes he’d had the strength and courage to tell Clover the truth, the gory details he’d told Robyn in prison, that the guards had recorded for James, the gory details that’d made James feel sick just from hearing them. 

Qrow wants to say so, but it’s too much, and he’s too tired. And he doesn’t need to, he knows he doesn’t need to. Because James knows already, because James feels the same.

And indeed, that’s too much to go through in a single day. It’s a long emotional journey ahead, and they can already be grateful today they took a small step, hopefully in the right direction. And ignoring the broken glass littering the floor between them beneath his heavy boots, James ventures another small step toward Qrow, until his fingers can reach the smaller man’s shoulders, brushing up and down his arm through his shirt, simply, softly, quietly. It’s but a ghost of a caress, a promise to try, to trust, to love, desiring nothing more than to be trusted in return…

And in return, Qrow takes a single step, grabs a fistful of the General’s lapel, and kisses the corner of James’s lips. 

“Thanks, Jimmy. For this evening.”

And James Ironwood has faced down Salem’s henchmen on his own, has ripped Grimm apart with his bare hands, has stared down the throat of a giant Leviathan without flinching, by the gods, he’d even enjoyed the benefits parts of friends with benefits (frenemies with benefit?) with the shapeshifter many a time, but a single peck from Qrow Branwen leaves him more timid and flustered than he can ever remember. 

As the former tribesman wishes him good night, vanishing into the corridor to retrieve his own quarters, the blushing General knows he’s going to be thinking about this for days to come.

* * *

The following day, he thinks about this - not about the kiss, of course, or so he convinces himself. But about their conversation, about Mantle, about Cinder, about what they’re waiting for. A flotilla drones watches over the city from above, a handful of street-level cameras still survey the perimeter, and Qrow even flies out every now and again to check for new fiery circles. But James doesn’t like to wait to be told what happened, he prefers to see with his own eyes, displaying the footage from all relevant cameras in parallel along a holographic projection that surrounds his desk. 

His eyes alternately scan each view, looking for any hint of flames, of nearly circular patterns. Clover, Winter, and Qrow all visited at some point to support him in this endeavour, but gave up soon after, leaving him to his endlessly careful examinations. Until colours, shapes, lines are but a meaningless mess imprinted in his mind, and patterns emerge out of nothingness, order sprouting from chaos. Until he can’t be sure whether he’s hallucinating, and all he can do is look for a trace of light...

Light. He finds light. But it’s not the warm, lively flicker of a flame in the middle of winter. It’s not the scalding, destructive blaze of a fire tearing down city blocks, burning like the sun. Instead, it’s cold like the moon. It’s a silvery shimmer caught on camera at the corner of a dark alleyway. It’s glistening in the dim light, glistening like steel, swiftly, fleetingly before vanishing around the corner. It’s sharp like a crescent moon… or the tip of a scorpion stinger.

James’s fist clenches and hits the desk, with enough strength to splinter the glassy surface under his steel fingers, under his frustration not to be able to keep his friends close, and his enemies closer. 

* * *

James thinks about this - about the surveillance footage, about Mantle, about Salem’s henchmen - and he can’t help himself from checking the camera feed every now and again on his Scroll, to the point of getting distracted when…

“Professor Ironwood?”

… when he should be supervising Academy students, assigning them to Atlas patrol groups so they can shadow military huntsmen and contribute to war efforts in times of siege. These are times of siege, not a time to be distracted, he reprimands himself mentally. Drawing a deep breath, James finally acknowledges the huntress in training’s question. 

“Yes, Ms. Katt?”

He follows her gaze to what seems to attract most the students’ attention outside the window, taking in the unusual lighting, the climatic anomaly previously unseen in Atlas’s artificial atmosphere. 

“Professor Ironwood, why is it snowing?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually don’t mean this to be a cliffhanger but the chapter is too long already and I wanna sleep. If you’ve ever been yelled at for sub-optimally stacking a dishwasher, I feel for you, I can relate (and if you have to do dishes by hand, I can relate too ^_^). James is getting more and more paranoid and conspiracy theorist, dunno if he can be saved on that front - I am basing this partially off of a friend and esteemed colleague of mine who also happens to have conspiracy theory tendencies, I hope I wrote it respectfully and did it justice. Overall let me know what you think in the comments!
> 
> Next chapter will be fun times in the snow and waiting for all hell to break loose. Maybe on Saturday, I don’t know. Till then, stay warm and posted xx


	10. Like a snowball effect (before everything comes crashing down)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is sooo long because I wanted to check up with the Ace Ops and every one before everything goes down to shit :) Also it’s almost Easter so there’s an Easter egg someone should enjoy!  
> Warnings: a tiny mention of Clover’s scar.  
> And I don’t know how a fishing rod works.

“Professor Ironwood, why is it snowing?”

The Ace Ops are lined up in the hall, awaiting for their student-chaperoning assignments for the morning. Clover’s there too, with the rest of his team - after all, a patrol through Atlas is hardly one of the more dangerous missions that can be assigned to a huntsman in these dire times. He’s glad to be back at work, glad to be given a purpose, to feel like he’s turning back into that old self of his, that unfamiliar old self everyone appears to respect, to admire, almost to worship. Not that the students appear to care about any of the professional huntsmen and living legends among them at the moment, too hung up on the large snowflakes that the violent winds send crashing against the academy windows. 

Clover can’t recall if he’s seen snow himself, it must have been a common occurrence throughout the harsh winters of his hometown. He only hazily remembers a story from his mother about snow storms that last all winter in Argus, save for one week where the kingfishers come to nest. Save for one week where his father’s ship can sail out to the sea again, for one week of fortunate reprieve before the elements unleash hell again. One week of calm after the tempest, of calm before the tempest. In fact, he reminisces this story to be the inspiration behind his weapon’s name, as a reminder that hopeful calm may always exist, however fleetingly, even through the darkest of times, through the strongest of storms, and the smart fisherman needs to catch the lucky opportunity before it’s too late. 

But between the high towers and elegant spires of Atlas, the snow looks out of place, sticking to pristine glass, sticking to silvery steel, painting all the sharp greys white and soft. The snow appears out of place, yet non-threatening, like a cotton blanket concealing everything, concealing concerns and secrets... 

“Some of the fire Dust that was previously used for temperature and atmospheric control in the city of Atlas is now being diverted to heat up to the new agricultural greenhouses,” the headmaster finally explains. “So while the temperature is colder now but still livable here, the greenhouses should allow Atlas to survive independently food-wise even if Salem attacks our airships bringing imported foods up here. Any more questions?”

Just like the audience, the General visibly relaxes after the revelation, which must have taken some effort out of him judging what happened the last time he let his guard down and trusted people outside of the military with his secrets… Still, Clover hopes that James took the right decision, for who knows what kind of unrest leaving people in the dark may have caused, how many more Grimm the panic would’ve attracted. 

The Ace Operatives nod knowingly, while some of the students still appear bewildered, likely hailing from Atlas itself or from warmer kingdoms and having never witnessed snowfall before. Huntsmen and huntresses in training from Mantle and Argus, who’d recently come to make up more than half of the Academy’s student body, are hardly as surprised however. Elm leans aside to whisper something to Vine, as much as Elm can whisper - but their captain must admit he didn’t catch what she said, momentarily too lost on his own thoughts. 

“It would be advisable for students to learn to navigate in a snowy environment if this is to become a recurrent situation in Atlas,” the pale-skinned huntsman quietly suggests to James. 

“Indeed, Operative Zeki,” the headmaster concurs, fidgeting with his Scroll to send each Ace Op the details of their assigned teams. “You may depart at your earliest convenience.”

While Marrow happily waves at some kids in the crowd, tail wagging in clear recognition of the students who’d be shadowing him, Clover checks his own Scroll, unsure if he’s ever had a run-in with team CBLT before. He’d have thought he enjoyed spending time teaching and training students before - after all, what was the whole point of fighting to save the world if one didn’t take time to train a new generation waiting in the wings? He wonders if he’ll be of any use to them now though, now that he doesn’t have any captivating experiences he remembers to recount to them, now that he may be just a shadow of the man, the soldier, the hero he was previously, not that he’d know…

The caws of a distant Nevermore flock draws his attention as they walk out on the path assigned for their patrol, their footsteps cushioned by the falling snow. One of the students draws a weapon, a rifle doubling as a model plane, loading a Dust cartridge and taking aim at the Grimm. 

“They’re too far,” Clover comments softly, hoping the huntress in training doesn’t take offense in his constructive criticism. “That’d be a waste of ammo, and they’re not an immediate threat right now.”

“What, think I can’t make the shot?” she challenges, cerulean eyes looking him up and down in defiance as she holds up her weapon like a paper plane, ready to toss it into the air in its drone mode. 

“That’s the captain of the Ace Operatives, Cyan,” one of her teammates, a brunette boy with a turquoise bow tie, comments flatly, interrupting her focus. “I think he knows what he’s talking about.”

Wondering who in Atlas Academy wouldn’t know what the Ace Ops look like, Clover checks through his Scroll for Cyan’s details, only to find that she and her team were transfer students from Beacon following the school’s fall, with only Teal, the bow-tie sporting kid, having grown up in Atlas.

“Strange that the Ace Ops have such a reputation in Atlas and not other kingdoms,” she notes matter-of-factly. “Do you travel to other continents for missions? Do you travel outside of the kingdoms?”

If he’d travelled in the past, Clover would do anything to recover those memories of faraway lands, exotic regions, different cultures… Her voice, her sky blue eyes are brimming with excitement at the mere idea of travelling, surprisingly contagious to the Ace Op captain.

“The Ace Ops are occupied enough with enforcing the General’s law within Solitas,” her Atlesian teammate clarifies, somehow sensing Clover’s discomfort while Cyan looks rather disappointed. “They don’t have time to travel.”

And their word is law, the boy’s tone seems to suggest. Still, Clover feels uncomfortable that the title he earned in another life might make him automatically right in the boy’s eyes.

“For the Nevermores, I’m only saying that the effort isn't really worth it,” the Specialist explains, wondering if he’s always been this nervous with being placed on such a pedestal. “Dust, Aura, all these resources are important to save for important things in times of siege, especially when the weather’s this cold. Now we could hypothetically reach the whale Grimm over there if we shot far enough… That’s Salem’s ride, it could end the war, who knows… but the reason we’re not trying is that it’d be too costly and too risky, the small probability of success isn’t worth it… Cyan?”

Smirking, the girl bends down to pick up a handful of snow, prompting some of the other kids to imitate her, expecting a snowball fight. But Teal and Clover watch her intently as her Semblance activates with a brief ultrasound pulse, and the crunched snow in her hand transmutes to powdery ice Dust. 

“Who said anything about wasting Dust?” she teases, loading the crystals into her weapon and readying herself for the shot, eyeing the Nevermores in the distance. “I can’t hold it for long, may as well shoot now.”

As she seems confident in her aiming skills, Clover wonders if he’d also be able to make the shot… surely he’d have been able to take it easily before… before almost dying. Surely that wouldn’t even have been a challenge for that version of him everyone revered, even Ironwood…

“In that case, I’m also up for the challenge,” he smiles at her, convincing himself that this is a good pedagogical exercise.

With a practised gesture, he deploys the harpoon part of Kingfisher at the opposite end from the hook and reflexively flicking his pin before aiming for the faraway avian Grimm…

… before a snowball flies past him, hitting Cyan in the face. She stumbles to the side and onto a patch of slippery ice, but luckily the Ace Op leader’s fast enough to catch her before she can fall and hurt herself. Immediately, a grin illuminates her tan features as she spits out the snow, gathering another snowball of her own to target whoever attacked her, likely the grey-haired boy from her team. And with the snowball effect, what started as a patrol exercise escalates into a snowball fight. 

This is absolutely unprofessional, the operative is aware… but there are no Grimm or criminals in sight, as long as his experienced huntsman’s eye and his Semblance sense for good fortune can tell. And who would he be if he doesn’t allow kids to be kids, to seize the lucky break in the calm before the coming storm? Apparently, his own teammates must agree, because when a stray snowy projectile hits Harriet, previously busy chaperoning team FNKI, the speedster, ever the competitive one, collects an even larger snowball into her hands before dashing off in a trail of lightning. The silver-haired kid from CBLT elicits a square glyph in his gloved hand, its shimmering contour reminiscent of a sundial, before storming off after her at nearly comparable speed.

Without losing time, Harriet all but forces Elm and Vine to join her faction, speed-blitzing toward them to pelt them with snowballs until they accept to side with her. Using his Semblance and her naturally bulky arms, Vine and Elm collect the largest snowball anyone’s ever seen, before Neon rolls it toward Clover and team CBLT, boosted by Flynt’s killer quartet that clears out a perimeter of snow on the ground around him. Fortunately for Clover, Marrow decides to even the playing field and team up with his captain against the rest of the Ace Ops. His ‘Stay!’ command stops the gigantic snowball dead in its tracks before it can collide with Clover’s still healing chest… just his luck, really.

“You alright there, boss?” the canine Faunus asks. 

“Not too bad,” his team leader smirks, compacting an icy snowball between his gloved palms before aiming for Flynt’s trumpet, deflecting the instrument and sending him sliding back a few feet, causing Elm to catch him and cushion his fall, her Aura roots sinking into the floor through the snow. 

With that, Clover winks at Marrow, breaking his focus for a split second and causing the humongous snowball to collapse over its own weight, covering them all in a thick blanket of snow. Covering them all… including the General himself, who was merely watching while typing into his Scroll from the sideline. Ever the lucky one, Clover finds himself mostly shielded from the tumbling powder snow by the fourth member of team CBLT, a bird Faunus girl who reflexively extended her wings over herself, Clover, and Marrow in protection. As she smiles at them bashfully, the Ace Op leader shoots her a grateful glance, using his strong arms to lift her onto his shoulders. 

“Think you can use the high ground to your advantage?” he proposes, hoping to boost her confidence. 

Understanding his plan immediately, she picks up a sizable snowball as his strong arms propel her high into the air, at the perfect angle for her to glide down, wings outstretched, toward Harriet and her team and drop her snowball onto their heads. Marrow and Cyan follow with a synchronised attack, as she uses her drone as a hoverboard and he employs his boomerang as a snowboard to sail through the snow toward their opponents. Giving a perfect chance for Clover to stray from the group and check on his General. 

“... James?” he calls out tentatively, resenting how his commanding officer will react to such a display of childishness from his best operatives. 

In lieu of a response, a steel hand tosses a snowball, rebounding straight against Clover’s chest. It should hurt. And it does hurt, yet the cold numbs his pain, such that at least his wound doesn’t ache more than usual. In fact it’s quite funny… funny enough for him to break into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, wiping the snow from his neck and his uniform while still unable to believe that James Ironwood, of all people, threw a snowball at him. 

“Did you just...” 

“Yes, Clover, I did.”

“You absolute idiot!” And before his General can retort at being called an idiot, the Ace Op shoves a snowball right into his face, causing him to drop his Scroll in surprise. 

Both James and Clover reach down for the fallen device, which only results in them colliding awkwardly into one another and tumbling haphazardly onto the snowy ground. As the younger man catches his breath, Ironwood regains his Scroll and finishes the message he’s been typing up, aqua eyes following his movements intently. 

“What are you doing?” Clover asks breathlessly. 

“Writing to Qrow, of course. He should join in.”

Oh, of course he should. Who doesn’t deserve to enjoy the fun, enjoy the lucky break, enjoy the snowball fight more than one Qrow Branwen? Not that they can be sure the grumpy huntsman would actually like it… but by the gods, even the General himself is far from insensitive to the fun, merrily flinging a handful of snow into the back of Elm’s head while she grunts in wide-eyed surprise, striking back by throwing Marrow into the rooftop just above the General’s head, which causes the thick layer of snow covering it to detach and slide straight onto James and Clover. 

As soon as he emerges from beneath the snow, the Ace Op leader stumbles upon Fetch and returns it to its rightful owner, who nods in gratitude as he catches, collecting himself off the snowy floor that mercifully cushioned his fall. Sighing in relief, Clover turns around to the sound of James dusting the white snow off his pristine white coat... for some reason. The General really needs to sort out his priorities, his right-hand man thinks, for his wavy chocolate hair is still sprinkled with an army of snowflakes.

“You have something here,” Clover murmurs, stepping in closer to run an awkward hand through his boss’s hair, chasing the specks of snow away.

Somewhere in the background, far away, too far away, Marrow activates his Semblance, stopping the snowballs, students, and soldiers flying and running in their direction. The Ace Op captain doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve such a loyal teammate, and makes a mental note to properly thank the Faunus operative later. But not now, now’s neither the time nor the place, as his digits delicately run through his General’s soft, silky hair, and everything else fades into the background, into the white as snow background...

Until a black shape dives through the cold air just above their heads, shapeshifting back into a recognisable red-caped silhouette even before reaching the ground and pelting all those present with a copious amount of snowballs.

* * *

“Achoo!”

“... I give up!” Elm declares loudly over the noisy backdrop of the mess hall, setting down her hot teacup onto Marrow’s tray before the sneezing Faunus’s wide eyes, reddened nose, and wagging tail. 

“Really, Elm?” Harriet says, quirking up a brow, “First Johnny boy, now you? Are you guys all gonna fall for his puppy dog eyes?”

“Hare, I think I have a… a c- achoo!” 

Keenly aware of the rest of the Ace Ops and Qrow staring at him and his potentially contagious cold, Marrow precipitantly buries his face into his napkin. At least he’s lucky the General didn’t join them, being too busy preparing his meeting with Willow Schnee later in the afternoon, concerning the experimental agricultural facility… officially, at least. No doubt Specialist Schnee would come up to his office with some snacks and have lunch with him while they’re both working. 

“I’m gonna get you a coffee, kid,” Qrow offers, slowly picking at the vegetable casserole in his plate. “You like coffee, right? No sugar and four creams?”

“Wow, everyone knows about my hot drink preferences?” the rookie wonders, pale blue eyes widening further in surprise. 

“Bird boy must be used to babysitting kids,” Elm comments with a small shrug, taking a sip of water. “I’m just sorry because I threw you onto a snowy roof. Shouldn’t you be sorry too, Hare? For making a tornado that threw all the snow at him?”

“That’s what you get for not teaming up with us,” the speedster sneers, casting a sideways glance at her canine teammate. 

“But… you guys ganged up against the boss,” Marrow protests agitatedly.

“I don’t hold it against you, Harriet...” Clover sighs, “I’m sure you made a great leader for the rest of the team in my absence, but you just need to work a little harder to win over Marrow’s heart. Look at Qrow, for example -”

“You do enough of that for all of us, captain,” Vine says before returning to meticulously mixing balsamic vinegar into his salad. 

“Or look at Elm. They know the way to his heart through his stomach.”

“Fine. I’ll get you some cake,” Harriet capitulates, using her Semblance to dash over to the dessert stand, check the available options, and run back. “Chocolate or lemon?”

“... lemon? Please?”

Before he can finish, she’s already stormed away across the mess hall in a fizzle of lightning. 

“I understand this may sound insensitive, but I have noticed you never order anything with chocolate,” Vine whispers to the Faunus, “do you happen to be allergic?”

“I don’t mind you asking… I get that a lot, because dogs can’t eat chocolate. Nah, I just don’t like chocolate that much.”

“I was not aware of a significant demographic disliking chocolate,” his pale-skinned teammate speaks, resting his pensive chin on his fist. 

Clover hadn’t realised his teammates knew so little about one another… not that he knows anything more about each of them nowadays, when he’s even incapable of anything about them that wasn’t mentioned in a nice and shiny file somewhere in his Scroll. At least Vine is blunt enough to ask, and the team leader can be grateful for that.

“Why, Captain here would rather have raisins than chocolate chips in his cookies,” Elm laughs boisterously, nudging her team leader in the shoulder a little bit too roughly for his taste. “We’d always baked a separate tray in the oven for him, back in CRME days.”

“Cookies?” Hare says, heading back to the table with a yellow cake slice over a white napkin in her hand, closely followed by Qrow who clutches a steaming coffee mug emblazoned with the Atlas crest. 

“... Cookies?!” the shapeshifter echoes, a light of urgency dawning in his crimson eyes. “Shit, the cookies! They’re still in the oven!!!”

Had Qrow been baking cookies before Ironwood called him over for the snowball fight? Clover wonders momentarily, before being distracted by the growing quantity of foods and drinks amassed onto Marrow’s tray before his bewildered face. 

“Wanna help me with that, Captain?” the Faunus suggests, running an awkward hand through strands of long ebony hair.

“Are you sure?” Clover asks, still working on his tuna sandwich. 

“You essentially coerced Hare into giving me cake, so I reckon it was a team effort.”

“Captain, is coercion what you meant to teach your newest recruit and your second in command… Hare?”

Elm and the boys stare in the direction the speedster and the shapeshifter came from, but they’ve already vanished, likely Harriet running after Qrow, and Qrow most likely after his oven threatening to burn down his cookie batch. Shrugging, Vine grabs their emptied trays with his Aura hands and pushes them onto the dedicated storage area at the back of the hall. While he and Elm aren’t prone to judge and the rookie’s still overwhelmed by how much food clutters his tray, Clover can’t help but wonder why Harriet would try to catch up to Qrow… but deducing from the sparks of gold and red down the hall, it seems like she’s just dragged the scythe-wielder into her Semblance just so that he can make it in time to his cookies. 

Just because she likes cookies that much… yeah, that would sound like Harriet, going by how she reacted earlier. 

“Hare likes cookies?” the team leader wonders aloud. 

“How did you know, Captain?” Marrow says, brow furrowed as he stirs his tea with one spoon and his coffee with another, borrowed from Vine. 

“Lucky guess,” Clover says.

* * *

“Qrow? You’ve been assigned a mission in Mantle, right?” Harriet asks as they run through the corridors in a blur of sparks, the world around them uncharacteristically slow and muted as if they stand in the eye of a maelstrom. 

“Well, technically, I assigned myself… why?”

“If you find Ruby, can you tell her I’m sorry? For what I said… and for everything I did.”

“...What?”

“Too long to explain… she’ll understand.”

“You realise there’s little chance I’ll run into her, right? Especially with my luck.”

“I’m not Clover, as much as I wish I were, so I won’t wish you good luck, but I hope you find her.”

“You’re not Clover… and even if you proved that you can beat all the Ace Ops and all the Huntsmen in Atlas, you’ll still not be Clover. And you know what? It’s not a bad thing, Hare. I can tell you from first hand experience that lucky charm might keep a perfect facade, but he makes frankly questionable decisions sometimes. You can be yourself and a great leader without becoming a carbon copy of the great leader you had, that you still have, or the idea of him you have.”

Something in his voice suggests he’s been through the same thing, that he’d been trying hard, too hard, to replace a team leader he lost, the idea of her, and everything she symbolised...

“Why are you telling me now?”

“Because I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.”

There is a sense of urgency as lightning flows around them like water, as time slows as if encased in ice.

“Then promise me that you’ll tell Ruby, if you see her? When you see her? Pinky promise?”

“Pinky promise.”

As their fingers lock together, they vanish away down the corridor in a rain of sparks.

* * *

“You’ve got a lot of stuff to move in for a guy who’s been in hospital for a month,” Qrow comments, heaving a massive cardboard box under one arm like it’s nothing before dropping it by the bedroom door, using its large weight as a door stopper. 

The scythe-wielder insisted to help with the move-back to Clover’s quarters, even though there isn’t really that much to move back in the first place. The team captain assured that he can handle it on its own, that despite his injuries he isn’t that fragile, but Qrow only justified that assisting with the task would keep him busy enough for his anxiety to momentarily wash away. And considering the huntsman’s upcoming mission to confront the Fall Maiden… everything else the future has in store, Clover can understand that Qrow would rather partake in this dull, boring exercise than idly wait and grow increasingly nervous.

“Most of these are keepsakes and photo albums they thought would be useful for my memories,” Clover shrugs, following into his quarters with another box of his own. “Pretty sure it wasn’t all mine to start with, I’m guessing James and my teammates also contributed some of these items. They’ve been very helpful...”

Of course, the apartment looks unfamiliar, even though not too dissimilar to Ironwood’s own, all modern corridors, all muted colours, just slightly less oversized. Qrow, however, seems to know his way better around the place, navigating without hesitation through the rooms while Clover only watches those lean, lithe arms carrying heavy boxes with practised ease, the smooth silhouette of slender muscles barely discernible through the fabric of his shirt... The operative wonders what Qrow had come here to do before… play cards? Have tea and chat? Or maybe more?

“You okay?” the shapeshifter whispers, concern lighting up in his garnet eyes. “If you need to rest I can take over from there carrying everything.” 

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing,” the Ace Op mutters, hiding his blush by turning around and pretending to do something useful, like pick up that photo frame atop one of the boxes and place it onto the corner of his desk. “There isn’t that much more stuff to move in and unpack any more anyway. That box can go in the cupboard, I won’t be using it.”

Obeying, Qrow slides the cupboard door open, setting the cardboard box down with a soft thud before eyeing the clothing dangling off the hangers above. He quickly scans through sets of identical uniforms to focus on civilian outfits. 

“Wow, who’d have thought you owned anything with sleeves?” he snorts, running his fingers onto a white polo shirt that made up for its non-sleevelessness by a rather revealing plunging neckline. 

“I… don’t think I’ll be wearing that any more,” Clover stammers, and he can’t explain, he can’t imagine it, he can’t imaging exposing the world to his scar, his horrific, jagged, disgusting, ugly scar, he can’t imaging parading around in this and letting all of Remnant see how much he was but a scarred shell of his previous self, letting everyone see, everyone but himself since he can’t even remember the perfect man his previous self was. 

“You can try it on if you want, maybe it’ll fit you with a bit of luck,” he says instead, causing Qrow to pull the garment off its hanger with a most doubtful pout. “I’ll... go move in the last boxes.”

It’s not exactly surprising that the shirt is a few sizes too big, too loose around the shapeshifter’s arms, forcing him to roll up the soft pale sleeves up to give the illusion of extra tightness. Qrow hasn’t bothered to button the middle all the way up, the thin opening revealing an enticing sneak peak of his slim, yet chiselled ivory chest, all hard planes and soft curves only marred by a mysterious map of wayward scars. Scars, neither beautiful, nor shameful, simply natural, like breathing, like living, like surviving, a testimony to all those who’d tried to break Qrow and failed, because he always survived, picked himself up, and moved forward. Scars along which Clover’s eyes can’t avoid trailing, exploring, cartographing, while the former tribesman takes no notice, instead wondering...

“Are these your parents in the picture?” he designates the frame his partner just set down on the desk. 

“Must be. With my sisters and me. Why?” 

Had the photo not been there before, if Qrow’s never seen it? Clover had just assumed that the image had been valuable to him, and its size suggested it would fit well at the corner of one’s study. Behind the gaggle of unkempt children, Alcyone Ebi, her brunette locks floating in the wind, has an arm wrapped around one of the twins’ shoulder, in a desperate attempt to keep her from wandering off the photo framing, while her other hand touches the stiff, rough, wind-beaten fabric of her husband’s pea coat with delicacy as if it were cut out of the finest silk. Only the family’s patriarch stares directly into the camera, ignoring the breeze buffeting his greying head of rusty auburn locks, his sea green eyes the exact same shade as his son’s, as clear as the stormless sea under the stormless sky in the background.

“You look cute. You all look cute, it must run in the family,” Qrow judges with a fond smile, looking back and forth between the photo and the in-flesh version of the family’s only son before his eyes. 

“Thanks,” Clover says, at loss for words. “The shirt looks good on you. You should keep it.”

“The shoulders are way too broad for me… but thank you. I’ll think about it. Anything more to move in?”

Crimson eyes look suspiciously down at Clover’s hands, devoid of any cardboard boxes. 

“No, just this,” he gestures to Kingfisher by his hip, setting it down against the wall, and then, because it doesn’t feel right, on the nightstand… where it almost rolls off, and doesn’t feel right either.

What was he doing before? Wearing his weapon around all day? He probably had to put it down somewhere at least to shower and sleep? He can see the shifter keenly aware of his nervosity and wishing to help, even though hesitant to touch Kingfisher. Judging by how Qrow reacted the time Clover had tried to pick up Harbinger, the Ace Op knows the other man won’t grab the another’s weapon unless he clearly voices his encouragement. 

“You can go ahead and try it,” he exhales quietly. “This switch...”

“I know,” Qrow murmurs back, pausing at the slight electric current at the contact between their fingers as they both press the button that expands the fishing pole. “I used to be a weaponry professor at Signal not so long ago. I’ve never seen anything quite like this though.”

“Old me must’ve thought it was a good idea… and everyone regarded old me like some kind of perfect genius apparently, so the weapon design can’t be that stupid… right?”

In lieu of a response, Qrow casts him a playful look and tentatively waves the weapon around, feeling its delicate balance as he executes a simple defensive flourish, complexifying it progressively as he gains a better understanding of the weapon. 

“Old you was a genius, and in many ways, brilliant,” the former tribesman says slowly, focusing on the smooth trajectories the hook traces through the tranquil air. “And you clearly still are, even if you don’t remember to compare. And I can see that Marrow practically worships you, Hare wants to be you, and Jimmy wishes he could still be you, or at least the idea of you, the perfect version of Captain Clover Ebi. But I knew old you, I was actual friends with him, and I can tell you he was one hell of a piece of work in progress. He was a show-off, sometimes overconfident, kind of a brat, and that he made some less-than-perfect calls, and to be perfectly honest, what happened to him in the end? He kinda had it coming.”

“Getting stabbed through the chest? That’s mean,” Clover deadpans weakly, slowly taking in the simple truths he didn’t realise he’d so desperately needed to hear when he'd started to wonder if he'll ever fully recover and remember, if he'll ever turn back into that perfect person everyone knows but him, that perfect person everyone expects him to be, that perfect soldier Atlas needs in these desperate times. 

“Or at least… he was partially responsible for it… so was I, and so was James. Don’t get me wrong, old you had his reasons, and we all make stupid snap-decisions on the battlefield. But my point is that you don’t have to pressure yourself into turning back into your old self that you can’t remember and everyone else remembers as perfect, because that idealised version isn’t a person, will never be a person, and I… oh shit!”

Fortunately, Clover’s reflexes are fast enough to catch the bedside lamp before the hook of Kingfisher knocks it over in Qrow’s unfocused hands. From what little he’s seen of Harbinger, the captain knows that the only way the shifter can wield it is to dance with its momentum, to readjust the amassed velocity of its monumental weight strike after strike, and overshooting or undershooting by the smallest amount could prove lethal. On the other hand, Kingfisher’s ability to serve as a force multiplier comes not from its weight, but from its length and elasticity, and in aiming for a slash in any direction one had to _expect_ the tip to overshoot, and work with it.

“If you aim over here,” the Atlesian whispers, catching Qrow’s weapon-wielding wrist to demonstrate, “the rod will flex and the hook will go further that way, so you have to take that into account, and already start reeling back to counteract the overshoot. By shifting your body weight, like so.”

As the shapeshifter casts out the hook again, the Ace Op positions a hand against his hip, angling it appropriately so he can shift his weight onto his other leg, pulling back before the tip can bend too far in the intended direction and do further damage to the furniture. 

“You’re doing well,” Clover comments, very mindful of his body pressed flush against Qrow’s back, one of his hands clutching his pale wrist while the other caresses his hip bone through his shirt, the taller man’s breath ghosting into feathery jet black hair. “When the hook whips back like that, you have to take care of it, but it can also be used to deflect a hit, land a glancing blow, or even disarm an opponent.”

“How can I know exactly in which direction it bounces back?”

“Trust you luck.”

“You’re the one to talk.”

Qrow’s back arches slightly in a brief chuckle, his shoulder blade moving even closer to Clover’s chest, crowding his personal space with sudden warmth.

“In a snowball fight, how can you predict exactly how a snowball explodes on impact? This is exactly the same. Everything else is pure practice and skill, but for the very last step you have to accept there’s a little bit of uncertainty and take advantage of it.”

Clover can’t truly believe he’s explaining to a person with a misfortune Semblance to trust their luck, but here he is, trying, for all that it’s worth.

“You _are_ really brilliant,” Qrow says breathlessly. 

And broken, and brave, and flawed, and fantastic… his eyes say, but he can’t bring his lips to utter, in so little time, in so many syllables, in so many words, each unique, each imperfect in its own way, accumulating like a snowball effect. So many unspoken words, all converging into one word in the Ace Op’s mind, one idea of a person, one _person_ Clover admires, respects, loves in his own flawed way beyond what words can express…

“Qrow...” he murmurs.

Everything else could be pure practice and skill, but for the very last step Clover knows he can only count on his luck, seize his chance as he finally closes the distance between them. 

And in the middle, their lips meet. Which one of them initiated it remains uncertain, as the captain can’t stop, compelled to kiss the shifter’s slightly chapped lips again and again, with infinite gratitude, with infinite gentleness. They’re both out of practice, and the angle is awkward, with Clover still standing behind the shorter man’s shoulder, but neither wanting to change their positions in fear of breaking the kiss. Both of them are barely aware of Kingfisher still in Qrow’s grip, lowering it as best as they can as the Atlesian circles an arm around the other man’s waist, pulling him closer so he can deepen the kiss... 

But the Ace Op senses the reluctance in the shapeshifter’s touches, in his fingers, his lips, moving as if too afraid the recovering soldier will break again. And he knows the lucky reprieve is waning now, that they’ve already had and spent their chance to confess their feelings in ways words cannot convey. And to interrupt the onslaught of regret, of guilt pouring from Qrow through the kiss, threatening to overwhelm the younger man, they both know that their lips must part.

“I’m sorry...” the operative begins.

“It’s not that I don’t want you, lucky charm,” the huntsman sighs, pressing their foreheads together while increasing the space between their almost touching lips. “But I don’t want us to do anything you’d regret when you eventually remember the truth.”

Clover closes his eyes. 

“I understand, I think.”

“Good.”

And the taller man relaxes the… ‘muscle’ he hadn’t realised he’s been flexing all day, the extra push on his Semblance that he’d been exerting to make sure that everything went all right with his team, with the students, with James, with Qrow. To make sure that fortune was clement to them in the last instants of this reprieve between tempests, to give them time to mend themselves and lick their wounds before all hell breaks loose again. Before the shifter’s scroll starts beeping in this very instant, displaying a recognisable face as the caller ID.

“Yeah, Ice Queen?”

“There’s been a sighting of Cinder’s activity in Mantle less than a minute ago. We must fly down immediately. Our airship is ready to depart from dock 6, are you ready?”

“I’m on my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … ooops~!!! ;)  
> CBLT (pronounced ‘cobalt’): Cyan Azura, Bild Gray, Lilac Lighthouse, and Teal Allen, being my first OC team ever that I made so many years ago (before the canonical fall of Beacon, hence why they were meant to be Beacon students) just getting a cameo here.  
> Easter egg - Clover’s love for raisins is still not my idea (it came up in my Fair Game Week stuff, day 5 if you like raisin cookies and/or are interested), thanks Rhi and hope you liked :P  
> My brain wants Qrow and Harriet to become BFF and Marrow to wanna be Clover’s god son (dog son??) and goodest boi. The Ace Ops and everyone have been through some shit and needed some fun times in the snow, Ace Ops (except Clover) won’t appear for a while but I promise we’ll see them again in the story.  
> Cookies will be back in the next chapter! And also, Qrow and Winter vs Cinder and Neo! There haven’t been that many fights in this fic (compared to my other fics anyway which have fights every other chapter) so I hope the wait will be worth it! Till then, stay hydrated, safe, and tuned xx


	11. Like there are no gods above, and we're alone now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where all shit starts to go down… ^_^  
> Warnings: canon-typical violence, brief PTSD flashback

“Only you could come up with a plan like this,” Winter sneers, pushing the airship door open while her other hand rests at her sword hilt. 

“Hmm?” Qrow grumbles, looking at the burning city blocks below. “Want a cookie?”

At her skeptical expression, he shoves the whole cookie in his mouth, hoping to convince her they’re decent tasting and he doesn’t intend to poison her, before pulling out another biscuit from his pocket and handing it out to her. 

“How dare you litter my ship with crumbs?!” she shrieks, prompting him to take a cheeky bite out of the cookie before letting himself tumble out of the plane and into the void. 

“Anything to please you, Ice Queen,” she hears him call out in decrescendo, his mouth too full to articulate, as he plummets toward Mantle underfoot. 

He only takes one glimpse at the priceless scowl on her face, before shifting into his bird form and gliding down. The buildings are still blazing under his wings, forcing him to dodge the rising flames threatening to lick his feathers. His eyes tear up at the smoky fumes, but he can still recognise the burn mark on the floor, the circular shape that hadn’t stopped haunting his nightmares, scarred into his memory as if branded by burning iron… yes, this is Cinder, this must be Cinder. And judging by the still vivid intensity of the fire and its limited spread, she must’ve acted recently, so she can’t be far. 

Their airship dropped them much higher above the city than usual so as to avoid detection, not only by Salem’s henchwoman but also by the Mantle civilians, such that an Atlesian military ship’s arrival doesn’t cause unrest. Amidst the snowstorm falling from above and the flames soaring from below, the people of Mantle would much less lightly pay attention to a small corvid flying over the streets. Or to silvery glyphs and a pale Manticore, white against white on the backdrop of snowy skies. 

But Qrow knows they’re expected, if not by the people, by Cinder at least, who’d gone to such destructive lengths to announce her presence, ever so confident, almost as an invitation. So he loses no time in switching back to his human shape as soon as he reaches the ground, hearing the soft thump of Winter’s boots beside him on the ashen ground. The familiar ruffle of metal against fabric echoes through the sizzling air as the specialist draws her blade, and Qrow instinctively reaches for Harbinger at the small of his back. 

“Any signs of Cinder? Of civilians?” he says in hushed tones. 

“I circled the perimeter… doesn’t look like it. If anyone’s still around, that should make them run off.”

As she speaks, a small glyph flutters into existence in her palm, and a pack of ghostly Beowolves scatter around them, sure to scare off any remaining civilians…

“We should make sure no one’s been injured by the fire or stuck under some debris.”

“We should  _ focus on the mission _ .”

“She’s right, you know, you should get started before everyone gathers around,” a different female voice comments from behind them.

“Cinder. Finally we meet again,” Qrow grunts, expanding his weapon into its sword form as he swivels to see her silhouette amongst the flickering flames, apparently unconcerned by her fiery surroundings. 

“The great Qrow Branwen, or whatever’s left of him,” the Maiden appraises, tilting her head slightly. “The pleasure’s all mine. The General must have gotten desperate to send his two caged birdies to me. I wonder if he’s gone mad, if he wants to arrest me. After all, I’m the one keeping Mantle warm, where your government is failing.”

Qrow and Winter have watched the freezing, burning city from the sky, and they’ve seen the truth in Cinder’s words: around the older circles, gatherings have formed, the people moving close to enjoy the warmth, to fight the destructive blizzard if only for a few days, a few hours more while the flames die out… But could that have been Cinder’s motive to waste so much energy burning the town? To win over its people?

“Where is the Relic of Knowledge?” Winter spits, advancing toward the enemy. 

“Wrong question, Schnee...”

“If you don’t tell me I’ll come get it myself!”

Accelerating abruptly, the Atlesian lunges forward, only for Cinder’s silhouette to waver and vanish among a multitude of heat mirages. Qrow reaches for Winter’s wrist to stop her before she can run head first into the flames. 

“The right question is,” Cinder’s voice continues with a disdainful chuckle from somewhere behind the fire, “where  _ was  _ the Relic of Knowledge? For you see, the relic is no more. It took me several attempts, but I finally burnt it down.”

And through the fiery debris, her Grimm arm reaches out toward them, strangely torn and tattered and leaking filthy, inky shadows… and hanging on one of the skeletal fingers is the lamp, or rather its empty shell. Where the perfectly spherical blue orb sat now lies a globe of cracked glass, all the coloured light that once radiated from its core seemingly extinguished. 

“How can you be sure it’s destroyed? How did you figure out how to destroy it?” the shapeshifter challenges in disbelief.

“Using the last question, of course. I thought crows were supposed to be intelligent.”

“How can we know you’re not lying?” the specialist snaps, arching a silver brow. 

Both women turn to Qrow as he shoots a quick, almost reassuring glance to his ally before calling out a single name:

“Jinn!”

Amidst the crackling fire, no response. No response, other than the rubble that continues to burn just as fast, just as madly, unperturbed. There will be no answer this time, with only Cinder’s wavering fire providing russet light rather than the lamp’s calm blue, with Cinder’s improbable claim rather than Jinn’s immutable truth. Evidence suggests the lamp was successfully destroyed, yet the possibility is so hard to believe that Winter and Qrow remain uncertain. 

“Salem didn’t order this...” the shifter exhales, dumbfounded. 

“Salem doesn’t matter anymore,” Cinder exults, lights blazing out of her eyes as her Maiden powers flare. “Her goal was to reunite the relics to bring back the gods. With one of the relics being no more, it all becomes null and void. If there were always any gods, if we haven’t been lied to, then it doesn’t matter now. It’s like there were never any gods above, there’ll never be a judgement day, and the people of Remnant are alone to choose their own destiny.”

“There’s a reason James never wanted that,” Winter retorts.

“Why would that be?” the Maiden scowls. “Because he wants to use the power of the relics to his own gain? To power up his own army, to raise his shiny city even higher?” 

“Because James and Oz thought humanity still has a chance…” Qrow hesitantly adds, “maybe not today, but humanity may still unite one day, an on that day we’ll reunite the relics.”

“I agree, humanity still has a chance,” their enemy echoes, almost nostalgically. “But only because they’ll have  _ me  _ as their goddess.”

“You made sure the gods wouldn’t return, threw a wrench in Salem’s plans, in Ozpin’s plans and James’s, for what? So that the only one left with power would be you? So that people would worship  _ you  _ instead of  _ them _ ?” the scythe-wielder growls incredulously, his grip tightening on the hilt of his weapon. 

“Find it hard to believe? It’s already working. My worshippers were begging me to come here, when they realised the General won’t come save them, that the gods won’t come save them… They begged me to come and burn everything, to bring some warmth to that frozen land of yours,” Cinder smirks as her blackened arm silently slithers through the sooty air around Qrow and Winter, reaching for a rectangular, charred mass in the background, loaded with meagre, burnt fruit and a small clay figurine with asymmetric arms and embers for eyes… an  _ altar _ ? To a new  _ goddess _ ? 

Salem’s henchwoman picks up the rough statue with her inky fingers, blazing eyes staring into blazing eyes in satisfied contemplation. 

“Look at that beautiful evidence”, the Maiden admires, confidence dripping from her tone. “Do you believe me now?”

“Robyn can tell us if you speak the truth,” Qrow hears Winter tell him just as he was going to share the same idea with her. 

“If I am indeed truthful, what tells me your paranoid General won’t lock me up in a cell anyway? I’ve heard he’s lost his mind these days. And by the looks of it, so have you. And here I thought his lackeys were still smart enough to at least know I won’t hand myself in without a fight.”

Qrow barely has time to hear Winter’s sword sing through the air, slashing straight toward Cinder’s arm. But the henchwoman saw it coming, curving her tendril-like appendage strainlessly to avoid the deadly blade. With a grunt of rage, the Specialist charges forward propelled by a sizable glyph, flying through the flames fast enough to emerge untouched. Fiery irises scrutating the blade tip diving toward her, the Maiden remains unmoving - only to shatter on impact with Winter’s weapon into a myriad of mirror-like shards. Quickly regaining her footing and switching to a high guard position, Winter curses under her breath at the illusion. Only her quick senses as she scans her searing environments allow her to notice and block the parasol thrust at her from the side. 

As steel slides against lace at the point of contact between their weapons, Winter considers the small frame of her new opponents, heterochromatic eyes staring up at her tauntingly. An annoyed rictus twisting her even features, the soldier kicks her opponent in the stomach with a powerful high-heeled boot, forcing her to open her umbrella and glide away. Ice blue eyes narrowing, the specialist loses no time in striking again in a flurry of attacks, each dodged, deflected, danced around by the smaller fighter whose weapon switches tirelessly from angle to angle, causing strong swing after strong swing to glance off ineffectively. 

As neither woman even grazes the other, Winter copies Neo’s ballet of backflips with an acrobatic backward bend of her own, the thrusting parasol flying past at a hair’s breadth from her face. Undeterred, she swaps her grip on her sabre, hooking the curved hilt of her weapon onto her enemy’s parasol and deflecting it away, causing the slighter woman to step sideways under her own momentum and straight into Qrow’s line of fire, who doesn’t hesitate to pepper her with a volley of Harbinger’s bullets. Pink and brown eyes switching colour, Neo opens her umbrella again to shield herself from his shots and the Specialist's sword - which conveniently blocks Winter from her view, giving the Atlesian enough time to summon a pack of Beowolves into existence. 

While serving as Winter’s ranged support, Qrow keeps his eyes and ears peeled for Cinder’s whereabouts among the flaming backdrop. She may have escaped again like the first time they met, leaving her own lackey to distract him and the Specialist… but the shapeshifter judges that unlikely, given the Maiden’s pride and her grudge toward both Qrow and his Winter since previous encounters. Soon, a familiar whistling sound caresses his eardrums with a response - and he only has seconds to jump away before the floor beneath him burns and explodes away. In mid-air, he swivels swiftly to avoid a fiery orb sailing toward him, singing the bottom of his already tattered cape, before blocking another burning sphere with the flat of his broadsword even before his feet meet the ground. 

Crimson eyes spy Cinder’s feet lifting off the floor as she pelts him in more fireballs, her eyes lighting up increasingly as she levitates. But he knows better than to let a Maiden tap into that level of power - and switching Harbinger back to its gun form, he aims for a charred support beam above his opponent’s head, causing part of the burnt ceiling to collapse onto her unfortunate position and pin her back to the ground. Heating up at the contact with her russet Aura, the debris catches fire and bursts, spraying the surroundings with searing shards. 

But flying in daring loopings between the incandescent fragments, the shapeshifter closes the distance in crow form, turning back just in time to bring Harbinger downward onto the self-proclaimed goddess. Summoning two glass blades from dust and thin air, Cinder crosses her weapons above her head to block his heavy sword. Experienced vermillion eyes having predicted her defensive mode, Qrow lets his blade slide sideways against one of hers, converting his momentum into an oblique swing targeting her Grimm side. Smirking, she parries, dodges, slashes at his chest, stabs at his thigh - each blow effortlessly blocked by Harbinger’s large blade, switched nimbly between the shapeshifter’s agile hands. 

As he witnesses her starting to levitate again, using her flames to enhance her speed and attack from different angles, he transforms his blade into its famed scythe form, looping it around her ankle to drag her down, causing her to fall flat on her back on the charred floor. As soon as she tries to pounce upright, a stark white Aura arc emerging from his blade sweeps through the air toward her, knocking her down once more. 

“You really think you have a chance against a goddess?” she sneers, pressing the flat of her palm onto the ground instead and eliciting a dozen of recognisable fiery circles around him, forcing him to spring upward before they blow up at his feet. 

Another fireball knocks him out of the air, erupting from Cinder’s human hand and forcing him to deflect it with the tip of his blade. Another orb meets the flat of his sword, another ends up cleaved by an Aura slash. When the next flash of light flies toward him, he reflexively raises his weapon defensively again, ignoring its colour: a bright blue as clear as a winter’s sky, which upon contact with Harbinger freezes instantly, encasing him in a block of solid ice. 

“Qrow!” Winter yelps as she deflects a swing of Neo’s parasol, catching her wrist to throw her back into the army of silvery Beowolves surrounding the smaller woman. 

The summoned creatures are hardly a hindrance for the parasol-wielder, yet they at least provide some distance between the Schnee and her opponent. A smirk never leaving her youthful face, Neo leapfrogs past the large shoulders of a wolf, spins around on her parasol onto the back of another to lock her legs around its neck and send it flying to the air to collide into one of its ghostly twins, both shattering upon impact. As soon as she lands elastically, she holds out her blade behind her back to stab a last Beowulf in the heart without even looking, without as much as an afterthought. Prancing with a bounce in her step, she executes an artful twirl to gain momentum as her weapon clashes against Winter’s, busy shielding herself from Cinder’s swords with a white glyph. 

Panting quietly with effort, the Specialist extracts her side sword from the hilt of her sabre to block Cinder’s blades and produces a second glyph in her sword-wielding hand to hold off Neo. As she pushes against both women on either side of her, the Atlesian clenches her teeth through the strain creeping into her arms and Aura - only for the Maiden to scowl and release a burning breeze from her palm, causing the glyphs to flicker off. Precipitantly, Winter tosses her smaller blade at Cinder like a throwing knife, who easily catches it between her Grimm fingers and spins it around playfully. Just her luck though, the Maiden’s confident game prevents her from noticing Qrow breaking out of the ice trapping him and running straight toward her, gun ablaze. 

Tilting her head at the sound of gunfire, almost as if in disappointment, Cinder opens her hand to block each bullet successively, a mere circle of Aura erupting from the middle of her palm as each round rebounds harmlessly. As Qrow’s feet quickly make their way to the group of fighting women, the part-Grimm raises one of her swords in a defensive stance, anticipating a close quarters attack from Harbinger. However, she doesn’t expect the shifter to shoot at the ground instead, using the recoil of his weapon to launch himself into the air, transforming his weapon into a scythe in mid-air with a dangerous whir of cogs. The airborne scythe-wielder executes a savage spin, the giant blade at the end of his long polearm quickly deflecting Cinder’s sword before striking at her neck, allowing him to shorten the handle and take her into a chokehold with Harbinger in its tonfa form. 

The distraction permits Winter to create a Glyph under her military boots, leaping high into the air in a graceful flip above Neo’s head, mirroring Qrow’s acrobatic jump. The henchwoman attempts to strike the soldier’s elegantly arched back with the very tip of her umbrella, only for a glimmering Beowulf to catch onto her legs and pin her down, just long enough for the Specialist to land behind her back and press her sword to the smaller woman’s neck. As she witnesses Cinder equally struggle within the huntsman’s grasp against the huge tonfa blade, the Atlesian allows herself to exhale in relief. 

Short-lived relief, alas. Curving backward at an impossible, boneless angle, Cinder’s arm reaches for Qrow’s neck and wraps around his wrist, wrenching Harbinger from his hand. While the shapeshifter rears his fist for a punch, the Grimm hand latches around his neck, its arm extending abruptly until it has him pinned up the nearest, mangled wall. Trying her best not to let go of Neo, Winter can only watch as the filthy fingers strangle her ally, writhing ineffectively as his feet dangle above burning air. 

“Do you really believe, Schnee, that I value  _ her  _ life more than you value his?” cocking her head in annoyance toward Neo, still struggling between the Specialist’s arms. “You soldiers are so predictable, I can see it in your eyes you’d rather let go of her in hopes that I’ll let go of him.”

Frantically, sky blue eyes search Qrow’s face for a plea, a hint of… anything. She can’t lose him like that, they should have had more time to make amends, to mend the rifts between them that kept them apart, kept them from trusting one another, from befriending one another… They must get another chance… and that chance materialises as the shifter’s glance flashing menacing red in his suffocation. 

Before he shoots her a single wink. 

“You don’t realise Qrow and I hate each other, do you?” Winter snaps back, tightening her grip on Neo. 

The huntsman gasps breathlessly - and the burnt wall collapses behind his back under the effect of his Semblance flaring out. Carried forward by the strength of her own push onto the shattering bricks, Cinder stumbles to her knees, only having time to produce a column of spiralling winds around her to chase away the tumbling debris. As Winter reflexively shields her face from the plummeting wall fragments, Neo swiftly wrenches free, protecting herself with her parasol, which catches onto the Maiden’s swirling winds that carry her safely away from the falling wall. 

Falling onto the floor, Qrow extends his misfortune further, hands trembling against the gravelly floor as the remains of the building continue collapsing into Cinder. Recognising the signs of uncontrolled bad luck she saw in Ironwood’s office, Winter keeps her distance, instead sinking her blade into the floor to generate a glyph from which a great white Manticore emerges. Wings outstretched, the summon glides toward the shifter, using its giant feathers to protect him from the dropping debris. 

When Cinder recognises the creature and forms a fireball in her hand, it’s already too late, its monstrous mouth already releasing a blast of blue energy that hits the Maiden in the torso, sending her flying backward into her own cyclone. Unable to resist the powerful winds, the aspiring goddess finds herself catapulted into her altar, which shatters upon impact at her body as she tumbles into a heap of burnt fruit. As she staggers back to her feet, her ruined cloak littered with ashes, the part-Grimm woman clutches her clay statue in one hand, while her other fingers caress the ring of the relic she claims to have destroyed hanging off her belt. 

“Tell your General,” she spits, barely looking at Winter and Qrow, “that he’s fighting for nothing, for his gods will never return and there’s new gods now.”

Then, as her feet flame up like rockets, she launches herself into the air, escaping upward into the smoky sky. Qrow and Winter exchange a quick glance before he warily shapeshifts and she pounces onto her Manticore’s back, both taking to the skies at the Maiden’s pursuit. Just as she notices her opponents catching up to her, a flock of summoned Nevermores surrounds her, talons and beaks ready to strike. 

They’re barely a nuisance, barely more than mosquitoes crashing against her gloved arms - but for a fraction of a second they distract her from Qrow, falling from straight overhead of her with Harbinger outstretched in scythe form. Slapping her palms together, she forms a giant flaming sword of her own to parry the enormous curved blade, metal colliding with glass with a sickening hiss and a flash of sparks. 

Flexing her legs, Cinder pushes herself and Qrow sideways through the air to barely avoid Winter’s ascending Manticore and her outstretched sabre. She doesn’t notice, however, the monster’s stinger catching the scythe-wielder’s ankle and throwing him around in a loop. Manoeuvring in mid-flight with the recoil of his shotgun, he rebounds against half a dozen snowflake-marked mid-air platforms that accelerate him into a time dilation glyph - and springs back toward the Maiden at a speed defying lightning. 

His ringed fist throws a single punch. And her oversized sword shatters as Cinder plummets through the air.

Her trajectory spirals out of control as she shoots fire orbs at both Qrow and Winter, only grazing their summoned Manticore ride. Spiralling out of control, into the hands of destiny, of fortune, or rather, of misfortune. Cinder notices the lamp post behind her just in time to narrowly avoid a painful collision, but the vertical pole provides Qrow with a perfect perch to loop his scythe blade around, propelling both his feet into his enemy’s stomach and kicking her into the floor with all his strength. As the concrete lays obliterated under the impact upon Cinder’s fall, Winter plunges off her summon’s back to land squarely into the Maiden’s midsection, keeping her pinned down and making her Aura flicker dangerously low. 

With a wordless cry of pain and anguish, the alleged goddess releases the last of her forces, and the soot-heavy air around her freezes solid, trapping both her opponents in a single wall of ice while she flies away, finally escaping unhindered.

Cold. Qrow’s too cold, and that’s unfortunate. 

Too cold, too hard, and it’s hard to breathe. How unfortunate. 

He can’t even pry his eyelids open, the thin skin scalded by the mere caress of the ice and everything’s too hard too cold too painful. And that’s unfortunate. 

He can’t open his eyes… yet, he sees them flashing red against the darkness of his eyelids as he pushes his Semblance outward again, pushes his luck again. And fortunately, the ice shatters.

He stumbles to the floor amidst a rain of ice shards, and now everything’s too hot, burning, yet still too cold, burning. But he doesn’t care, he must keep pushing forward. He’s drenched, and he’s wondering if his Aura is fizzing away from him this time. But he doesn’t care. Keep pushing forward. He wants to get up, punch the wall to free Winter, because he’s vaguely aware of the distinct lack of being yelled at and scowled at and the clicks of high heels and the clinks of her sword… 

But he doesn’t care. 

Because facing him, yet looking right through him with wide-open, milky white eyes, Neo stands. 

Staring at the sky, in the direction in which Cinder left. 

_ Her silver eyes are open wide, staring unwavering in the direction in which Summer left through the trees that surround their wood cabin. Her hands clutch a cup of milk, half-full, or half-empty depending on the outlook, not that it matters because she doesn’t care. The liquid reflects both her eyes, turning them into milky white mirrors, but she doesn’t care. She only cares about one thing.  _

_ “Unkie Qrow, when will mama return?” _

_ “It’s just a mission,” he assures, running a fond hand through Ruby’s hair, causing her to pout as he ruffles the dark crimson strands. “In a day or two, as usual.” _

_ They’ve rehearsed this scene many times, and even the toddler knows her lines perfectly.  _

_ “Good luck out there, mama!” she calls toward the tree line, as the last flutters of a white cape vanish from sight. “Come back soon!” _

_ And her uncle knows his part too, it never gets old. He remembers Summer’s comments as if it were yesterday: ‘You know the girls would just be so much happier to get double the amount of cookies if both you and I bake for them’. _

_ The least he can do for the girls is bake them cookies when Summer is away, and just that always makes things infinitely better, helps them see the glass of milk half full. The girls are so lucky to have him, so spoiled to have both their super-mum Summer and their sober uncle Qrow. That cookie trick works every time.  _

_ Every time, except this time.  _

_ Qrow doesn’t know if it’s Ruby’s expression that alerts him. Or his Semblance warning him of impending bad luck. Or the fact that they never discussed this mission, that even Ozpin has never mentioned it, that raises a red flag. Or all of the above. But he knows this time’s not like all the previous times.  _

_ That this may be the last time Ruby stares wide-eyed in the direction in which Summer left, white milk reflecting off her silver eyes.  _

_ But Yang’s already waiting for him inside, and the least he can do for his nieces now is to check how the cookies are doing in the oven.  _

Instinctively, Qrow checks how the cookies are doing in his pocket. 

From the fight, they must be in shreds, burnt, soaked… not in greatest shape. 

But the least he can do… the least he can do for this girl, this lonely girl whom Cinder abandoned in her escape without so much as a look, so much as a thought…

Slowly, he reaches out to her with an open hand, a cookie sitting atop his palm. 

Only after a while does she notice, blinking rapidly as she eyes the cookie, no longer transfixed by Cinder’s departure. She stares some more, eyes widening more, turning brown, turning green… and finally, turning pink. 

Too concerned gauging her expression, Qrow doesn’t notice a lone, charred, burnt support beam creaking unsteadily behind Neo’s back, wavering ever so slightly in the fiery air, wavering ever so unfortunately… he doesn’t notice, until it’s too late. 

_ Qrow doesn’t notice, until it’s too late. He’s been too busy pushing back Tyrian to notice the unfortunate beam tumbling straight toward unfortunate Ruby… It’s too late to call out for her, she won’t have time in her Aura-depleted state to react to dodge to escape… All he can do is forget the scorpion Faunus and lunge forward, splitting the beam with his Harbinger before it can harm his niece. And that’s unfortunate. _

_ She shoots him a grateful glance, a small smile on her lips, a smile he’ll never forget.  _

_ And then, the sickening sound of a stinger slashing through fabric, through skin.  _

_ The stinging pain is immediate, and he can’t move can’t breathe can’t speak, because the pain is everything, the pain is the world.  _

_ And there is a gunshot… _

_ But he can’t more can’t breathe can’t speak… _

Qrow can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t…

All he hears is a swish of metal tearing through wood. Looking up, he sees Winter’s sword cleaving the falling beam neatly in two, saving both himself and Neo as she glares at them disapprovingly. Releasing a deep breath, Qrow allows himself a small smirk… for all her flaws, he’d always trusted she’d be able to save him one day. 

Luckily, he’s too tired and still too shaken by the ghosts of past memories to find anything snarky to say. Luckily, because instead he looks back at the Atlesian wordlessly, looks over her shoulder and sees ashes and dust floating off the ground. Floating weightlessly, until they coalesce into a bow and arrow. And luckily, he sees Cinder shoot the arrow. 

Instantly, he barges past Winter and Neo to block the projectile, causing it to splinter and break against the flat of Harbinger. 

Causing it to splinter and break, the particles drifting harmlessly around his broadsword, him, and Neo. Splinter, break, and reform just in time to lodge itself into Winter’s side. The specialist yelps in pain, falling onto one knee, one gloved hand clutching the glass arrow embedded into her lower rib. Under her firm fingers, the projectile shatters easily, having marked but a shallow, burnt cut onto her pale skin. 

But already new glass shards, sharp as razors, materialise in mid-air at Cinder’s command, all pointed toward Winter. The Maiden’s eyes burn gold as she levitates, gloating in her nearing victory, in her ability to finally kill a Schnee. Cinder closes her fist, and glass rains from the sky. 

Glass rains, only stopped by an umbrella. 

Only stopped by a dainty lace parasol, to be precise, open too fast for any of them to even notice, against which the fragments rebound without causing any damage. As she lifts her parasol after the rain has passed, Neo stares straight back into surprised golden eyes, ablaze with the desire to burn her alive…

Qrow’s bullets bounce off the Aura bubble surrounding Cinder, as she doesn’t lift her hands to stop them, simply revelling in the deafening sound of shells shattering onto her immaterial protective barrier. The deafening sounds that cover the thrumming of an engine, as an airship dives through the sky and into the Maiden at full speed. 

She attempts to blast it with fire, but unfortunately the Manta wavers through the turbulent air, causing her to narrowly miss its engine. Qrow’s heart clenches as a recognisable hook sails out the ship’s door, its rope entangling around Cinder’s Grimm arm as it reaches for the wing. And slamming her into the floor at full force as the weapon’s owner executes a prompt landing strategy amongst the carbonised debris. 

“Clover, what are you doing here?” Winter and Qrow manage to say at the same time, before all three of them walk toward Cinder’s fallen form, pointing hook, shotgun, and sabre at her face as her Aura finally shatters, amber particles drifting away from her body. 

None of them move however as Neo leans over her ex-mistress’s body, tilting her head as her eyes turn a vivid shade of green before she brings her boot down into the Maiden’s face, knocking her unconscious. Instead, Qrow and Winter continue to shoot concerned looks at Clover, while he arches a brow in confusion. 

“Can I believe my eyes? Is Captain Ebi himself here due to a case of insubordination? I thought James ordered you to rest,” Winter reproaches sharply. 

“Are you okay?” he retorts immediately, eyes darting to the cut across her rib marring her uniform. 

“I’ll be fine, it’s a superficial wound and the burning arrow cauterised it. My Aura will heal that in no time.”

“It’s not really insubordination,” Clover explains with a shrug, “James was nowhere to be found or reached, so I assumed he decided to come here with you. I just used my security clearance to hop above the airship that was supposed to come pick you up after you apprehended the Maiden anyway. I suppose you were lucky I’m there, even though you two would have managed alone eventually.”

“James is nowhere to be found?” Winter repeats, for which the scythe-wielder can be grateful, as his breathing quaver too much to utter these words that fill his mind with overwhelming panic.

“He isn’t answering his Scroll, and he isn’t in his office.”

Just as he speaks, his Scroll pings with an automated message signalling Ironwood’s back in his office in time for his meeting with Willow Schnee, and they all let out a sigh of relief… only ever so slightly shaken by the nervousness that remains in the air, as if something still weren’t quite right…

“... Aren’t we going to talk about it?” Qrow asks after a beat of hesitation. 

“About what,” Clover says evenly.

About the fact you kissed me and I kissed you back and I liked it gods I loved it and I don’t know why and I want to figure it out and we have to figure it out and we will figure it out I promise but I still like James and I still like you but I don’t want you to get hurt when you finally remember and figure out what happened… the shapeshifter’s mind supplies helpfully in a whirlwind of ideas, and he doesn’t know where to start. 

“I don’t mean to interrupt your moment, lovebirds,” Winter cuts in, “but Clover, you should return to Atlas with the Maiden, put her in custody, and check that the General is back and all right as soon as you can. Oh, and get Cinder to see Robyn when she wakes up, she has some claims to verify.”

“Of course, right away,” the Ace Op replies, eyeing the shifter and the white-haired woman alternately, “but aren’t you two coming along?”

Avoiding his aqua glare, Winter sets her sights on Neo, narrowing her eyes when she speaks next. 

“Neopolitan, if you reputation doesn’t lie, I believe you’ve been looking for a certain little red, so you might have information on her whereabouts down here in Mantle. Well, you see, I want to find my sister and the Winter Maiden that never leave her side. Unfortunately for us, Qrow here is also looking for little red and her sister and probably won’t want to go back to Atlas until we’ve found them. Alone against the two of us, you know you have no chance. So you’ll do exactly as we say and help us find where they are. What do you say?”

Instead of answering, Neo points to her throat indignantly, before her eyes switch colours and a mischievous smile stretches at the corner of her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody:  
> Qrow: come to the light side, we have cookies.  
> Neo: (ohmygosh cookies Roman used to give me tea and cookies aaaaa) ... k.
> 
> Robyn’s gonna tag along soon so...  
> All hail team QCRWN (Qrow, Clover, Robyn, Winter, Neo, pronounced crown)!
> 
> It's past 3AM here and I am still editing. Welp. Yay me. I don't even have anything snarky to say about that. I'm going to bed.
> 
> I don’t even know if I’ll watch following volumes of the show but if Cinder’s character arc turns out anything like this or if a relic gets destroyed, I called it guys I fucking called it. I got the idea for her plan listening to Sacrifice and All Things Must Die, especially the latter. My theory/headcanon is she doesn’t want Salem to win and call back the gods, she wants to shoo away the old gods (including Salem and Oz) and be her own goddess. I read through the wiki page on the relics and it doesn’t say that they’re indestructible… one could assume they are, but infinity stones are destructible, horcruxes are destructible, deathly hallows are destructible, so why not relics?? Lemme know in the comment if you find evidence stating otherwise. Also lemme know your thoughts in the comments below :)
> 
> And if you thought things were going a bit too well for our heroes… wait till you read the next chapter ;) Likely on Saturday? Till then, stay safe, warm, and tuned xx


	12. Like you, I stop at nothing to protect those I love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went back and edited the previous chapter to say that after ‘disappearing’, James was actually back in his office *for his meeting with Willow* (I had mentioned it before, but this is just to settle where everything is in the timeline). So if you read a pre-edit version of that chapter, just be aware I added that. Here we figure out what James was up to when he disappeared, so this takes place at the same time as the previous chapter.   
> This was definitely a lot of fun to write and one of my fav chapters (a lot of those I like are James-centric I noticed so do with that what you will), hope you enjoy :)  
> Warnings: violence, injury, Tyrian gets his own warning

Salem has her whale, and it’s only fair Ironwood has his own. 

Amidst the most powerful flotilla in Remnant, amidst a multitude of Manta airships: a single cetacean. The Orca. Sleek, furtive, much smaller than Salem’s giant whale, but no less a killer, no less a hunter. Smooth black and white fuselage ideal to camouflage among the gray clouds, each and every curve optimised, each and every rivet sanded down to minimise air resistance for increased speed. The furthest-ranging sonars in all of Atlas to track down prey, and the matching fire power to take it down. A marvel of cutting-edge military technology, the brainchild of one Pietro Polendina, designed to hunt, designed to kill. 

Designed at the request of, and to be piloted by one, and only one person. General James Ironwood.

Visitors who have been fortunate, or unfortunate enough to be welcomed into the General’s personal office have noticed the imposing Atlas sigil in the middle of the floor, and the geometric tiling radiating outward from the circular emblem. The interstices between the tiles even light up whenever the General commands it, shining red if he locks down the office. One may mistake this for a grand display of military might and political power destined to impress onlookers, as a metaphor of Atlas throning in the middle of the world, its hegemony expanding across all directions in Remnant. 

It’s not. In Atlas, nothing is a just metaphor. In Atlas, everything is efficient. 

Ironwood opens a drawer of his desk, revealing a keypad into which he dials a code and performs a retinal scan. With a low hum of operating machinery, the tiles of his office slide apart in different directions as the middle emblem sinks and the floor opens. And rising upon a sleek steel platform, the Orca thrones. 

The General takes place in the cockpit, pressing a switch on the dashboard that causes the office’s windows to slide open, allowing him to take flight into the pearly Atlesian skies. The Orca is relatively rarely used, only for special missions, special  _ hunts  _ that won’t be undertaken by anyone other than Atlas’s fearless leader. Once he vanishes into the cotton sky, away from the agitation of the busy skyline, James finds himself alone. Alone within the metal shell, alone within his own half-metal shell, alone with his heartbeat, with whatever’s left of his heart. 

But even in his heart he isn’t alone, because his heart clenches, and a shiver runs down his spine at the mere thought of his prey. At the mere memory of that crescent-shaped, magenta-tinted steel stinger he oversaw in surveillance footage. At the mere reminiscence of the existence of Tyrian Callows. Of what he did to Qrow, James’s Qrow, by just grazing him, marring his smooth ivory skin with a jagged purplish scar, the poison damaging his organs deceptively deeply in a way he’d probably never entirely recover from. Of what he did to Clover, James’s Clover, almost killing him weren’t it for a miraculous stroke of luck, daring to break James’s perfect soldier, James’s perfect version of himself, daring to break what was supposed to remain unbroken, undamaged, untouched. 

Paying no mind to the snowflakes crashing against the windshield, James steers the Orca toward the coordinates at which the scorpion Faunus was last sighted by the surveillance system. As he nears the site, he reduces his ship’s altitude, hovering just above the streets of Mantle covered in a thickening snow blanket. In the distance, dark fumes drift upward into the desaturated sky, but he ignores them. Qrow’s already dealing with Cinder, the cause of James’s nightmares after Beacon’s fall… so it’s only fair James get to deal personally with Tyrian, after what the serial killer did to Qrow, to Clover, to  _ his  _ Qrow, to  _ his  _ Clover, after the irrevocable damage he did to their three ineluctably entwined souls. 

Ironwood’s course of action is only logical. Previous attempts to send men, even Atlas’s best men, after Callows having backfired terribly, James can only take matters into his own hands, under his own control. After all, it’s not like the lethal stinger can harm the metal half of his body, or likely even reach him through the thick steel hull of the Orca. After all, he would sacrifice anything, including himself, starting with himself, not just for vengeance, not just for personal feelings, but just to ensure that Tyrian  _ never  _ lays a finger on Qrow again, on Clover again, or on  _ anyone  _ in Atlas or Mantle again for that matter. Because after so many days, months, years of neglecting Mantle, the least he could do for the lower half of his Kingdom would be to rid it of its worst vermin, of its most dangerous serial killer who’d been revelling in the massacre of Mantle citizens left and right. 

It follows that it is only logical that James will stop at  _ nothing  _ until it becomes an absolute  _ certainty  _ that Tyrian will never cause any harm  _ ever  _ again. 

When he’d seized Arthur’s bag and his scrolls, James had the devices searched for any useful files - of which were blueprints of Tyrian’s prosthetic stinger. The appendage was made of a unique bio-active alloy resistant to the corroding venom it was designed to contain, as well as hard enough to cut through metal, glass, concrete… The mere thought of what that twisted tail can do is enough to tie James’s stomach in knots, but the General knows better than to let his emotions take control of him. Rather, the point is that the Orca’s scanners can spot the way the prosthetic absorbs and reflects radiations, allowing Ironwood to pinpoint its location with a few feet’s accuracy even through walls and ceilings. 

A needle in a haystack. 

Or rather, in some kind of dingy inn, half-collapsed under the weight of the snow, likely uninhabited with the embargo and the amount of casualties the Grimm had already reaped from the city. 

When James was back at the Academy, initiation involved surviving in the wild, sleeping on the forest floor among the writhing vipers and other venomous vermin. He learnt that a way to draw the vermin out, if not outright obliterate it, is fire. After all, the scorpion Faunus is but cowering vermin, a chaotic coward whose only predictable trait may be his instinct for self-preservation. As he hovers above the building in which his target was sensed, the General’s draws in a deep breath, his metal hand tapping a series of commands on the tactile screen of the ship’s dashboard. On the deep blue surface of the monitor, pale letters appear.

_ Command chosen: missile launch. Target locked. _

_ Warning: possibility of civilians in building. Confirm command? _

James clenches his fist, hating uncertainty more than ever. 

“What’s the probability of civilian presence?” he hails, switching to vocal command. 

_ Thermal sensors indicate 85% probability of civilians in building. Confirm command? _

“How many?” he asks, trying his best to remain rational, to calm his beating heart as adrenaline courses through his veins. 

_ Most likely estimate: five persons, including two children. Confirm command? _

“How likely is that estimation?” 

At least if Qrow or Clover were with him, he’d know what to expect from his luck… But this is war, casualties are always probable. And this is Tyrian, who’s outsmarted both Clover and Qrow, some of the most seasoned huntsmen in Remnant, at his own brand of insane intelligence. The criminal is likely smart enough to know he should hide, rather than run out and into James’s view from the cockpit of the Orca, unless his hiding place is destroyed. Even if James lands his ship and walks in, Due Process in hand, he can’t be certain he has a chance against Salem’s henchman who somehow escaped both Qrow and Clover, can’t be certain the killer won’t try to take the civilians hostage and cause the mayhem that usually surrounds him. 

_ 37% likelihood. Confirm command? _

But James isn’t Clover, and James isn’t Qrow. And this is precisely why he can succeed where they failed. Precisely why he can end Tyrian where no one else could. Precisely why he has to do it so they don’t have to. Because he’s ready to sacrifice his humanity, of whatever’s left of it, ready to sacrifice a handful of lives with a modicum of probability if it means saving more lives in the process, ready to sacrifice whatever it takes to stop Salem’s servant. Because he knows he can’t beat the Faunus at his own crazy game, so he’ll force Callows to play to Ironwood’s own rules, to partake in his game of cat and mouse, of hunter and prey, in which the Orca inevitably emerges as the apex predator. 

“This is General James Ironwood, and I confirm the command.”

_ Missile launched. _

The Orca has enough firepower to take out a small squadron of Mantas, yet the missile Ironwood chose was a smaller one, barely puncturing the roof of the mangled building as it collapses in a mess of snow and debris. James activates the noise-cancelling function of his headset, watching the small explosion unfold silently before his eyes and praying for the best. And soon enough, the scorpion rears its ugly head, staggering out of the rubble, seemingly oblivious of the dust littering his hair and outfit. His tail between his legs as he prepares to run, Callows looks up at the Orca’s majestic shadow overhead tumbling onto the white snow. Pupils dilate amidst golden eyes at the fearsome sight of the military airship, all cannons deployed, and James knows that look like a predator can smell its prey’s fear, and he knows the hunt has begun. 

The hunt has begun on Ironwood’s own terms, and all he has to do is steer the ship’s rapid-fire guns to chase Tyrian toward the breach in the wall, out of the city and into the tundra. Out of the city, away from collateral casualties, from chaos and uncertainty. Into the tundra, where his prey sticks out like a sore thumb among expanses of flat white, and there is nowhere to hide. Bullets crashing down at his heels, the Faunus runs, his tail deflecting some rounds while others ricochet against his Aura. But he can’t do much against the relentless rain of gunfire, can’t do much more than run in the opposite direction, run straight ahead, through the streets, through the snow… 

Soon, the serial killer’s racing slows, his Aura too damaged by bullets to keep him going, and James lowers the Orca until its belly almost grazes the frosted tundra to close in the remainder of the distance, only avoiding a brutal crash thanks to his unmatched piloting skills and the plane’s ultra-precise trajectory-adjusting systems. At the nearing sound of the plane’s engines and cannons, as he turns around and barely blocks a bullet before his face with his wrist blade, the criminal picks up the pace in a last ditch effort…

...and stops in his tracks, standing perfectly still with his back facing the Orca. In a desperate attempt to slow the plane to avoid it hurling straight past his target, the General sinks the bottom fin into the snow and reverses the thrust of all the airship’s engines, but the ship still lunges forward at the Faunus, all guns ablaze and trajectory out of control as the fin rebounds against the uneven snowy ground. 

The last thing James sees is Tyrian springing like a crazed puppet out of a box, backflipping acrobatically while his stinger grazes the Orca’s hull in a sprinkle of sparks, stretching toward the plane’s wing just as a twisted smile plays at the criminal’s lips, a smile that reaches all the way to his yellow eyes, turning purple. 

Then the ship crashes into the snow, and everything whites out. 

* * *

“Mother, is the General late?” Whitley asks, checking his Scroll briefly before crossing his arms again, rocking back and forth on his recently-polished shoes. “How unprofessional.”

“I’m sure James has important matters of war to attend to,” Willow assures warily as her eyes never leave the closed door of Ironwood’s office. 

“I’m bored,” the white-haired boy yawns, “and you look like you need a drink, dear mother.”

“At least on that we can ag-”

Before she can finish, the deafening cacophony of shattering glass echoes through the door, followed by the sickening sound of metal scraping against metal raking violently against their eardrums. There is a brief collision, and the doors slide open. To reveal a half-broken panoramic window, a knocked over desk, and amidst a rain of glass shards, a somewhat tattered airship lying obliquely, from which the General stumbles out, a strangely curved metal contraption similar to an oversized scorpion stinger in his hand. 

“James… General Ironwood,” Willow stammers, “perhaps it is more convenient if we return at a later time.”

“No,” he waves warily, limping his way to his guests waiting at the door. “Please come in, my apologies for my inability to offer you a seat.”

A sad smile lights up in her eyes, but she looks too tired to emit a laugh at his half-hearted joke. 

“It’s been a long time, James,” she muses, stepping forward regally, elegant high-heeled shoes apparently unaffected by the mess of debris filling the room. “For you to hold a meeting when your office is in such a state, I take it that what you want to discuss cannot wait.”

“My airship’s antenna that lets me open the window remotely has been destroyed,” he apologises flatly by way of an explanation. 

“Before you ask, I accept to fund your greenhouse project,” she adds, glancing at her Scroll, “as long as you’ll use seventy percent of Dust from the SDC to heat up the greenhouses. You know, the Dust that was excavated by our workers from our mines but that we couldn’t sell due to the embargo.”

“Fifty percent,” he says, his tone clearly betraying he’s not in the mood for negotiation, and never really has been. 

“Sixty,” she counters, clearly not enjoying it either.

“Deal.”

She flicks through her Scroll until she finds the relevant form, amends it and signs it before sending it off the General. 

“As to helping with the facility itself, I’ll see what I can do, but you must understand that my… abilities with my glyphs are not… exactly what they were back in the day.”

Back in the day, their team WILW days, where everything was simple and the main concern was having to sleep in the forest during field training missions. Ironwood lets out a small sigh reminiscing those happier times.

“I don’t doubt your capabilities, Mrs Schnee,” he replies finally, barely registering the sudden coldness in her red-rimmed eyes.

“So you still trust your fearless team leader, after all these years,” she jokes softly, staring past him and hazily out the window. 

James wants to find something smart to answer, but he’s just too tired for that, after the crash-landing and everything that led up to it… he just wants to lie down. Besides, of them two she always had the better sense of humour, and he’s way too old to start learning the difficult art of cracking jokes.

“What about Master Whitley? Would you-” 

“Whitley never had his Aura unlocked, let alone trained with his Semblance,” Willow cuts in, her thin fingers nervously pushing her son aside as if to help him take refuge behind her skirts. 

She wants to hide him in shame, the headmaster realises, as a huntress unable to train her only son at the science of combat, giving in to her husband’s preference to turn him into a well-versed businessman, a carbon copy of his father. The young boy is having none of that however, jaw clenched in indignant rage at the thought of being guiltily brushed aside despite his best effort to hide his boiling emotions. 

James can’t imagine what it was like for him, to be brought up with the promise of a great future, with a well-defined destiny before him only to have his world come crashing down throughout the course of one night, to find out that he’s not the favourite son and heir any more, but the vessel of his mother’s guilt, the living proof of her parenting failure for his lack of Semblance prowess. But not having the most impressive-looking Semblance himself, at least James can relate with the teenager.

“A… friend of mine says we need all the help we can get in these trying times,” the General points out, “so Master Schnee, I would be willing to unlock your Aura if your mother could dedicate some time to training you. I could also see if we can spare some time in Specialist Schnee’s schedule to help out.”

As he speaks, he steps forward toward Whitley, willing to interact with him eye to eye. He tries to activate whatever’s left of his Aura, before a sudden flash of stinging pain flares in his thigh, causing him to stumble and lean onto the mechanical stinger still in his hand for support, using it like a cane. He hadn’t realised he’d been hurt so badly, the adrenaline of the battle numbing his aches, fuelling his every gesture, keeping him from collapsing, the adrenaline that slowly faded until now. 

“James? Are you hurt? Let me see...”

“There’s no need, Mother, the General’s not wounded,” Whitley interrupts her as she runs to his side. “He’s more machine than man, it’s not blood that’s leaking out of that cut. It must be the same fuel leaking out of his robot parts as in that prosthetic he holds.”

Without understanding, James glances down at his thigh, at the thin gash spreading diagonally across the fabric of his uniform on his  _ human  _ side, wiping it briefly with his fingers. When he stares down at his stained gloves, he doesn’t see red, he sees purple. And at the still-dripping end of the severed stinger, just as the boy astutely observed, the same purple oozes out. 

“James. What happened,” Willow murmurs, pressing a gentle hand to his shoulder, and it’s not even a question. 

He wants to answer his former team leader, his former friend. But he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what happened, not any more than she does. All that happened after the crash out in the tundra - a snowed-out blur in his memory. All he can do as he winces in seething pain is to piece out the events, just as she’s doing. The wreckage of the Orca are covered in blood… but not Ironwood’s blood. Just as the kid said. The stinger’s end is also red-stained, already coagulating to filthy brown… but not with Ironwood’s blood. Just as the kid said. 

“I don’t know what you did. But at least I hope it was worth it,” she contemplates melancholically, dialling the medical emergency number on her Scroll. 

And it was worth it. He doesn’t know what happened, but it was worth it. As long as Tyrian won’t hurt anyone, won’t hurt Clover, won’t hurt Qrow any more, it was worth it. As long as the serial killer was obliterated from the snowy surface of Solitas, it was worth it. As long as James exacted his vengeance on Salem’s henchman who dared harm those he held most dear, sacrificing his body, his soul, his heart so they didn’t have to, it was worth it. His heart, his soul, his body were already mangled beyond salvaging even before he set out after Callows anyway, more robot than human, so it was a small price to pay. He may have robbed Clover of his revenge, robbed Qrow of his score to settle, may even have robbed himself of the satisfying memory of his enemy utterly annihilated before his eyes… but in the end, it was worth it.

“...Mother?” Whitley speaks hesitantly, from far away through the purple haze of James’s throbbing pain.

“Stay with me. Tell me something,” she begs into the General’s ear, undoing her belt to tie a tourniquet around his thigh. 

“Willow...”

He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what happened, doesn’t know what to do any more, barely remembers what to breathe… Whatever vengeful adrenaline, whatever possessive compulsion for retribution had been keeping him afloat, whatever inhuman fuel had been coursing through his arteries to keep him moving forward is subsiding now, and all he knows is pain, pain like a million needles pierce his skin and flesh relentlessly, every passing second...

“Do you have any news of Weiss? How is my baby girl?”

“I… don’t know. Not… any more than you do...” he stutters, fighting off another wave of pure ache. 

He wants to say that he’d have liked to know, that he’s sorry, that he respects Weiss for her ability as a huntress and her defiance toward Jacques. He wants to say he still cares, despite his later disagreement with Willow’s middle child. He wants to say he’s sorry for sending her eldest daughter to the frontline too, to a battle in Mantle against a near-goddess, to a battle she may never return from. He wishes he could say she’ll return, that Willow’s not a bad mother, that both her daughters will return… But he doesn’t know that, because all he knows is pain. 

“Is that true, Mother? Does he still have all his mind?” Whitley prompts, an obvious shiver in his youthful voice. 

“Whitley,  _ stay back _ ,” his mother implores as she senses his fear, her maternal instinct pushing her to run toward her increasingly terrified child and take him in her arms before it’s too late. 

Her terrified, untrained kid who’s never lived in times of war, who hasn’t learned to mask his negative emotions, his panic fear seeping from every inch of his skin. His fear, only resonating with Ironwood’s near-unbearable, barely-contained pain in his poisoned state, like a beacon of negative emotions attracting the Grimm… Negative emotions she tries to soothe, whispering sweet nothings as she runs her fingers through his smooth silver hair, before it’s too late. 

But it’s too late. For a split second, the room floor shakes. And the floor cracks. Concrete cracks, metal cracks, glass cracks. And shatters. And when James looks up, a giant winged Beringel already smashed the Orca entirely flat under its monumental fists as it landed onto the room floor through the broken window. The General wants to stand up, to do something, but the pain lacing through his leg is too great, only fuelling the monster’s rage further. Fists pounding its gigantic chest, the creature beats its wings furiously, creating a shockwave strong enough to send Ironwood’s desk flying across the room, straight at defenseless Whitley, crawling his way amidst the debris… The boy gasps, eyes widening in fear… and then, there is a gunshot. 

From Ironwood’s hand, Due Process fired a bullet, deflecting the desk’s trajectory before it could collide into the helpless teenager. Instead of falling forward, the table rolls sideways as the General reaches to catch it with his metal arm. He wants to hold the desk up as a shield before himself and Whitley, dragging himself pitifully across the floor as he’s too hurt to walk and the young boy seems too shocked to move, if he’s not hurt. James doesn’t know if Whitley’s hurt, because all he knows is pain, and all he can do is hold out a little more, and hope the boy isn’t wounded. 

But the steel table’s weight is too heavy, the headmaster’s body is too heavy, even his eyelids are too heavy, and he knows he can’t fight any more. And yet he must, to stop Salem’s creatures at all cost, to protect Atlas from the Grimm, even if just to protect Whitley, to protect his former teammate’s son after losing track of both of her daughters in Mantle…

“Alert to all units,” he calls out through comms in a desperate last effort, “we have a code red on the top floor. This is General Ironwood speaking, I repeat, code red. This is not a drill, to all units, we have a -”

The desk is suddenly weightless. The world is suddenly weightless, debris of the Orca floating off the cracked floor. Ironwood’s eyelids are still heavy, his body is still heavy, but he’s levitating too, levitating slowly as a giant spinning glyph materialises underneath them, covering nearly the whole office floor. With a familiar crystalline tune, the patterns atop the glyph complexify, and from thin air an immense King Taijitu materialises around the Beringel’s body. Standing tall between the primate Grimm and her son, Willow Schnee closes her hands, and the summoned creature’s fangs sink into the ape’s powerful arms. The silvery scaly body wraps around the Beringel’s torso, pinning its wings and strangulating it until the Grimm vanishes into a puff of black particles, just as fast as it appeared. 

Basking in the glimmering light of her dissolving summon, Willow swivels around to face her baby boy, eyes wide with shock and suddenly blooming admiration, still shivering behind the General still shielding him with his half-metal body. And to face her former teammate, barely recognising her any more as he struggles to dispel the red alert using some command on his Scroll, before the purple pain overcomes what’s left of him entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Team WILW (pronounced willow): Willow Schnee, James Ironwood, Lazlo Lagune, and Arthur Watts.   
> Willow will return, and so will team WILW (you can tell I love them already, lol, been wanting to write badass Willow since chp1). Also, Robyn will return. Soon. VERY SOON. ;)  
> Is James still salvageable? Who knows. What’s his unimpressive Semblance? Who knows (Willow knows… ahem). Next chapter on Wednesday I think, stay safe and posted xx


	13. Like a sly fox, like a cunning bird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG this chapter breaks my brain aasfuafqsuzafaziofdsaaflnh. (this is chp13 so of course it’s a special one) Enjoy :)  
> Warnings: mentions of V7E12 (like, a lot of mentions)

“Good work, team,” Clover calls out as the soldiers drag Cinder through the prison corridors. “Please go on ahead, I’ll catch up with you later.”

Atlas has a specific cell to detain Maidens should they lose control of their abilities or side against the government. The walls, the locks, every smallest part was forged and hardened through fire and ice to resist the tremendous powers of a fully realised Maiden. Recent advances in Atlesian technology outfitted the cell with the same equipment as half an Aura transfer pod, draining its prisoner’s Aura until her powers became dormant. It sounds drastic, perhaps even akin to constant torture, but seeing how much havoc a Maiden can wreak, it’s also necessary. Or at least Clover trusts so, he wouldn’t know how much that technology hurts or not, that information’s classified. Whether the cell has ever been used in the past is also classified information, even with the Ace Op leader’s security clearance level. 

Not that this worries Clover much as he splits from the group to head towards a different cell around the corner. He has no time to lose, he has to find Robyn and escort her to Cinder, in order to verify the truthfulness of the rogue Maiden’s confessions. He has no time to lose, he should also check up on the General afterwards, in the aftermath of Ironwood’s brief, mysterious disappearance. After all, he’d promised that he’d keep Winter and Qrow updated… and Qrow was right, Clover reflects as he can’t help his mind drifting back to the shapeshifter, they should talk things through. 

They should talk about that kiss, what it meant for the two of them, what kind of promises it held for the future, for when they’d… recovered enough to engage in whatever form of relationship their scarred souls would be ready for, if Qrow would like such a relationship at all. They should talk about the kiss, what it meant with James for the picture. Because the Ace Op captain is starting to suspect that he’s been having a crush on his commanding officer the whole time, and as much as the scythe-wielder thinks he’s being subtle and keeping his emotions guarded, the undercurrents of affection between James and Qrow are painfully obvious to the perceptive eye. All three of them would need another long conversation around some more bowls of fish soup sometime…

Right, back on track, Clover reprimands himself mentally, forcing himself to ignore his grumbling stomach as his wandering mind returns to the mission at hand. He has to check his Scroll for Robyn’s cell number, because he can swear he passed it already… He wonders if he’s always been so distracted in his life, but then recovering from his recent injury tends to make him perpetually hungry, and catching up with everything he forgot and everything that just happened is a lot on his mind… it’s not a good combination. Still, walking by the indicated cell, he checks the number once. Then twice. Then thrice. 

Because the cell with that number is empty. 

The door is left ajar like a mercilessly mocking mouth. Where did Robyn Hill go? What is he supposed to do now? Walk past the cell, pacing alone in an empty corridor only populated by his footsteps, repeatedly until his luck strikes and something happens? He walks past once. Then twice. Then something happens. 

There is a brief collision, followed by a muffled gasp. Pushed back slightly, he regains his balance within seconds, only to face a young woman he somehow bumped into in an apparently deserted corridor before his eyes. How did she appear out of thin air in Atlas’s most secure prison? In surprise, he takes in her short stature, her distinctive blue hair… he’s seen her before, but he can’t pinpoint where, and her clothing looks different now. But the light that dawns in her golden eyes isn’t one of surprise, merely of defiant recognition… did they know each other?

The Ace Op draws his weapon reluctantly, wondering if fighting an old acquaintance whose presence looks unauthorised in these parts of the prison is the best course of action… until she vanishes again. In the span of an eyeblink, just as fast as she’d appeared. In his momentary distraction, he feels the ghost of a touch against his waist, and reaching for his pocket he realises his Scroll can’t be found. Adopting a combat stance, Kingfisher in hand, teal eyes scan the environment, failing to find the blue-haired girl, the elusive pickpocket, or anyone in the corridor who isn’t behind bars. But peeled ears detect the bribes of a conversation as a female voice prompts:

“You can work with that? Turn the heating grid back on with this Scroll?”

“Now? Impatient, aren’t we?” a male voice drawls in response. 

“The faster you restart the heating in Mantle,” the woman snaps, “the faster I’ll give you the antidote for - ouch!”

Clover’s heard enough, and tapping his pin, he tosses his fishing hook through the air toward the source of her voice. He can’t see where it reaches, but he senses the pull at the end of the line. Indicating that just his luck, his hook latched onto something… or judging from her reaction, someone. Reeling in his catch, he sends her flying into the nearest wall, slamming to the ground and into view before his eyes. He barely has time to react before she draws a crossbow and shoots at him. Dodging easily, he stares in relief as her darts sink into the floor surrounding him. But a whistling sound echoes as the projectiles light up - and a fraction of a second later, the darts explode, causing the floor to collapse beneath the operative’s boots. 

Eardrums thrumming among the deafening explosion, Clover manages to use Kingfisher as a grappling hook, catching onto one of the prison cell bars to drag himself back up through the newly punctured gap in the concrete floor. As soon as he lands, more darts fly toward him, forcing him to bend acrobatically backward to evade them in his precarious position a hair’s breadth away from the hole. Identical arrows continue to assail him from different directions, as in response he whips out the rope of his weapon into tracing ever-flowing orbits around him, blocking all incoming projectiles like an impenetrable wall. 

His arms swing, parry, cast the fishing line again, deflecting some darts and splitting some others, while his mind spirals out, considering the possibilities at hand. He’s at a disadvantage while his opponents are cloaked, so he must take out whomever is projecting this invisibility shield if he hopes to gain the upper hand. He could try his luck and slash blindly at them until his hook connects somewhere useful, but it didn’t work so well the first time, so he might as well rely on his wits instead. 

Bending down to the concrete floor ruined by explosive arrows, he picks up a sizable piece of rubble and hooks it onto his weapon to swing it into a nearby hard light Dust lamp, causing a small explosion that fills the air with clouds of powdery debris. Clouds that stop at a neat immaterial boundary, curved like the surface of a dome. Dodging the arrows flying toward him, he charges straight toward the dome’s centre. 

The first person who springs to view is the blue-haired girl, her hands shimmering in a bright shade of indigo reflecting against the iridescent surface of the intangible dome. Mentally apologising for having to take her out first, he casts Kingfisher to wrap the cable around her and throw her toward the hole in the ground. She narrowly avoids the fall by planting her spear-like weapon into the ground, but separating her from the rest of the group prevents her from cloaking them, so Clover can count that as a lucky reprieve, eyes already scrutinising the space to identify the remainder of his opponents. 

A gangly man with piercing green eyes seems busy fidgeting with the Ace Op’s stolen Scroll, but he doesn’t appear as an immediate threat, bearing no visible weapon on his person. Still, getting his Scroll back would be nice, the operative reflects as two women already lunge toward him, wielding similar polearms to the golden-eyed girl. The larger warrior reaches him first, both opponents using their weapons as spears. Spinning on his heels to increase his momentum, he slashes, evades her counter, thrusts forward while she swiftly sidesteps him before taking advantage of his disrupted balance to launch a barrage of attacks of her own. Parrying with practised agility, he notices quiet footsteps behind him signalling the smaller woman, a sheep Faunus, jumping at an opening, launching herself into the air to slam her staff down onto his back.

As fast as he can, Clover rears his arm and releases a harpoon off Kingfisher’s butt, firing at the Faunus without even looking in hopes of pushing her back for long enough so he can deal with her burlier teammate. At his back, he hears the white-haired woman’s weapon clash with his projectile in mid-air as she twirls her polearm to deflect, landing mere inches behind her intended target. But the Atlesian already turns back to the larger woman, using the elasticity of Kingfisher to hook his weapon around the crossbow portion of hers and disarm her with a flick of his wrist, before releasing his fishing line to slash at the Faunus. Except she catches. 

She catches his hook into her hand, and suddenly he finds himself dragged by the rope of his weapon, dragged inexorably into that strange space inside her palm within which Kingfisher progressively disappears. As he can’t help but watch in fascination, he’s aware of more crossbow darts shot at him by the human women, causing him to throw out his horseshoe to deflect. While the good luck charm blocks one of the arrows, another finds his shoulder, rippling against his Aura before clattering to the floor, while he winces in pain at the impact dangerously close to his still recovering injury.

“Done,” the lanky man voices, distracting the fighters for an instant as he hands Clover’s Scroll to the group’s apparent leader. “Heating should be back on.”

Clover turns to see the team captain, a tawny-skinned blonde woman with platinum hair and a fan crossbow. She also looks familiar… was she somewhere in the many files he had to catch up on concerning his past? Or did he see her more recently? Such as on the many posters covering the walls of Mantle when he flew by less than an hour ago?

“You’re Robyn Hill,” he pants in realisation. 

“... Clover? You don’t recognise me?” she stammers as everyone gasps in surprise.

Taking advantage of his opponents’ temporary shock, Clover swivels around, tugging on his line to send the Faunus flying straight into her larger partner, knocking both fighters back. Simmering with rage, the blue-haired woman races in for a spinning kick, which the Ace Op barely dodges at the expense of his balance. As he falls backward into the nearest wall, he witnesses the white-haired warrior run toward him, using her weapon to pole jump onto the tallest woman’s back, who sends her flying even higher above the operative’s head. In mid-flight, she opens her palm downward, and the Atlesian captain can only gape as something  _ heavy  _ drops from her hand… before a large Dust crate slams toward his head, forcing him to roll away before it can impact the floor, causing the cracked concrete to damage further in an explosion that hacks the operative’s Aura away. 

Clover can sense he only has a sliver of Aura left, staggering under the stinging pain of tiny concrete and Dust debris colliding with his back. Even with his best efforts, there’s no way he can single-handedly defeat a full team of seasoned Huntresses, top graduates of Atlas Academy if their files are to be believed. He reaches for his earpiece to call for assistance, but the blonde woman immediately catches on and shoots a single arrow that rips the device out of his ear and shatters it against the nearest wall. The dart created a fresh breeze past his temple, but it barely grazed him, not even piercing his skin. If she’s skilled enough for such a shot, he infers it’s only her mercy that keeps him from killing him or knocking him out when he’s still injured and vastly outnumbered. 

“So the rumours are true,” Robyn comments, weapon still in hand. “You really don’t remember anything.”

“What do you want from me?” he sighs warily, unsure why he’d still be useful to her. “After all the structural damage you’ve done to the corridors, reinforcements will be on their way, so you must still want something here since you haven’t run away yet.”

“Still a sly fox, always prompt to deduce, I see,” she teases, playfully reloading her weapon before his eyes. “You’ve helped us enough already. It was only thanks to you opening all the prison doors with your access codes that my team was able to follow while cloaked and sneak into here after all.”

“Your plan was to wait for  _ him  _ to randomly walk into the prisons?” the hacker shrieks, balling his irate fists. 

“For anyone with the correct clearance to open the doors, Volts,” she answers without facing him.

“So what are we still doing here? The operative’s right, we should run away now before…”

“You Atlesians always  _ assume  _ things,” Robyn interrupts, “I don’t need anything from Clover, even though taking him hostage could be useful. No, I only wanted to lend a hand to an old friend.”

Clover vaguely remembers they were once teammates, even though that notion remains abstract to him. Were they old friends? Or is she messing with his already messed up mind? He might be like a sly fox, but her opportunist escape plan alone proves that she’s but a cunning bird, potentially attempting to trick him.

“Still don’t remember, old friend? Well,  _ you will. _ ”

And without further warning, she proceeds to shoot him in the face. 

He deflects easily with Kingfisher, but…

_ And without further warning, she proceeds to shoot him in the face.  _

_ He deflects easily with Kingfisher, but she attacks again, relentlessly in the cramped space of the small airship, under Qrow’s skeptical stare and Tyrian’s elated gaze. He parries attack after attack, until his luck perturbs the plane’s trajectory, allowing Clover to make her stumble and fall face first.  _

_ “Fine,” the shapeshifter grunts, raising from his seat to swing Harbinger at the Ace Op.  _

_ Clover wants to sense the hesitation in his partner’s powerful slashes, wants to interpete his slow, large overswings as reluctance to fight, wants to trust Qrow, to believe in him. But if James issued an arrest warrant for him and the kids, there must be a reason…  _

_ “I wish it hadn’t come to this,” the operative says, blocking an umpteenth blow from his opponent’s broadsword. _

_ “It doesn’t have to -” _

_ But Robyn already bursts in between them, breaking the contact between their weapons to stand by Qrow’s side facing Clover in the narrow space. She yells as she attacks him again, but he’s too distraught with his own thoughts to focus on what she says. The two huntsmen are pushing him back, and the best the specialist can do is match them strike for strike. _

_ The scythe-wielder had been by his side the entire time, but what had the kids been up to? He hasn’t heard from the rest of the Ace Ops… What have the kids done to them? Has he failed them, as a leader, had he failed to be there for them, to save them? Is it too late for his team already? Did James, Qrow’s long-time friend, want the shifter arrested because he fears what he and the kids might do to the General himself? To the rest of his men, after taking out the Ace Ops? To Atlas itself? Is it too late for Atlas now? For James? Has Clover failed to save his General once more? _

_ In his distraction - or was it bad luck emanating from Qrow? - he deflects a crossbow dart onto the binds tying their prisoner to the bench, allowing Salem’s servant to break free… _

_ And from there, everything starts spiralling down… _

_ Figuratively, and literally… _

_ It doesn’t take long before the ship spirals out of control and crashes to the ground under the crazed killer’s impulse, and all Clover can do is kick the door open and jump out before it’s too late… _

* * *

_ “Sometimes the right decision is the hardest to make. I trust James with my life! I wanted to trust you -” _

_ A flash of red. A flash of pain. A flash of all his life before his eyes. He can’t tell what comes first, because time is pain, the world is pain and time ceases to exist…  _

* * *

_ He’s drowning, drowning into his memories, drowning in his own blood as the pain from the backstab, literal and figurative, saturates his body, and he doesn’t know anything else, and the weight of his guilt pulls him down, down, down further, like he’s drowning in a puddle of his own blood, a bottomless puddle, drowning further and further from the sunrise... _

* * *

_ “James will take the fall, I’ll make sure of it.” _

_ Everything’s too numb. Too cold already. Too silent, and nothing is certain. _

_ “Good luck...” _

* * *

“Let him breathe, he must be in shock,” Robyn orders as a concerned May slowly backs away from their former team leader. “May, it’s time for operation sheepwreck, explain to Fiona on your way.”

The Faunus looks overly concerned as the blue-haired woman drags her away, while Watts and Joanna scowl silently at the terrible, yet mysterious pun. 

But Clover… should be in shock. Yet, instead of panic at his core, he only finds numbness. Overwhelming numbness, muting everything, everything but his heavy heartbeat and pulsing pain from his chest scar. Is this… it? Is this what they’ve been concealing from him for months for fear that it would break him down? It’s nothing new, he knew it all along, he’d pieced out most of the information by connecting the dots. It’s anticlimactic, unheroic, and no more gruesome than he could already infer seeing the extent of his wound.

He should be breaking down… feeling something. Something more than the discreet stirring at the back of his mind. Yet all he feels is tired. Tired, but he must push on, because he still has things to do.

“Clover? You’ll be alright? We’ve gotta leave. I still need you as a hostage.”

“Then why didn’t you take me hostage and run away first before pulling that stunt?” he counters warily.

“You weren’t our leader and tactician for nothing,” she smirks.

“How could you make sure shooting me in the face was going to work?” 

“I didn’t.”

“Can you save your teary-eyed reunion for later? Can we go now?” Watts intervenes, tapping his foot nervously. “You said the antidote was-”

“There is no antidote,” Robyn cuts in. 

“...  _ what? _ ”

“Because there is no poison on my pin. Just a tiny whiff of Tyrian’s venom I took off his tail for effect. It won’t kill you. Clover was there when I did it in the airship. Right, boy scout?”

“Right, I saw that,” the operative speaks shakily as she takes his hand, their fingers glistening green in response.

Cunning bird, she is indeed, Salem’s henchman notes, wide-eyed while inspecting the faintest stain of purple on his hand. 

“The boys are right, we should hurry out of here before the guards arrive,” she whispers more urgently. “Clover, will you be okay, or do we need to knock you out and put you in Fiona’s hand? I know you’re strong, I know you can keep moving forward.”

He’s tired, and the ghost of the past tug weakly at his mind. But the past won’t catch up with him yet, not if he moves forward. And right now, he has to move forward, he has to be strong, uphold his promise to Qrow and Winter, and check how James is doing.

“I’ll be fine, but there’s somewhere I need to be first.”

And before she can react, he runs away down the corridor, silently saluting as if to promise he’ll be back.

* * *

It wasn’t easy to find the General amidst all the mess, but eventually Clover managed to locate his hospital room. Doctors and nurses scurry like ants around his bed, but at the sight of the Ace Op leader they move away, aware of his rank and allowing him some intimacy with James. Or not. 

Because it’s James, but it’s not James. 

He lay motionless on the pristine white bed, the machines having taken utter control of his very self, of keeping him alive. His cheeks are sallow, his skin depleted from its colour, even the bags under his eyes look like faded sepia on aged photos. A disproportionate amount of cables, tubes, needles hanging from the human side of his body, and almost none from the robot side. Needles, tubes, cables supposed to drain the poison out of his body while transfusing in healthy blood and plasma. The gruelling sound of sucking pumps echoes, and down translucent tubes liquids flow, purple, clear, red… too much red… 

Everything beeps, too loudly, but too desperately silently because his heartbeat’s too slow, and too many monitors display lines of shifting vitals for Clover to be able to follow. But still, the operative follows the vitals for a while, like a sailor watching the sea, until he sees patterns forming, like lulling tides, and a ripple of certainty, almost insignificant yet existent, caresses his mind. 

The patterns are regular. Stable. Ironwood’s going to be fine. 

“General? … James?”

The headmaster’s voice is hoarse when he finally answers. But recognisable. 

“Clover. You’re here… where are Qrow and Winter?”

It’s not James, but it’s James. Clinging to life with all his strength, clinging to that human side of him while he could let go, because he’s got so much left to fight for, so much left to protect. He’s a captain on a boat at the heart of the tempest, the last one to abandon ship, and the cables are so many anchors tethering him to life, to his dream, to his duty. And his ultramarine eyes, as bright as ever, stare in recognition at his right-hand man, standing unscathed, standing at his rightful place, at his side, for real, always. Only Winter and Qrow are missing at his bedside now. Away from his reach, away from his protection.

“In Mantle… they’re unharmed, and we put Cinder into custody.”

“Good… I’m so proud of you.” 

Clover’s chest swells with pride at those words, not just for himself but also for his allies. For Winter, for giving the Maiden who’d injured her what she deserved. For Qrow, who’d made so much progress in recent weeks… as far as Clover can remember… and who’d led and completed the mission. And for James, who’d learned to trust Qrow, to trust others with his plans, with his nightmares, his dreams, his duty for Atlas, because they’d all figured it out together. 

“And the Relic of Knowledge?” Ironwood prompts further. “Did you secure it?”

He doesn’t know where to start. There are no gods. Or at least it’s as if there were no gods now. No gods to judge whether what he says is right, what he says is good. No gods, no redemption, no punishment, no destiny, no one watching over them now, but each other. No one to watch as they choose their own path, collecting the broken pieces of themselves as they walk. No one to watch out for each of them, to make sure they take time to mend their broken parts, but each other.

“It’s a long story, and you should rest, after whatever happened... what happened to you?”

The team captain knows. He’s overheard the doctors discussing, traced back the events like a trail of breadcrumbs, but the missing crumb is why. Why did James go off on his own, rather than sending the Ace Ops, or even Qrow, after Tyrian? He knows that James wants the Ace Ops to remain in Atlas and protect it… but doesn’t deploying the Orca sound rather overkill, just to... eradicate… one… Faunus… 

“I did… what I had to do. Tyrian won’t hurt you any more, I made sure of it. This is a small price to pay.”

And the General grabs Clover’s hand, intertwining their fingers. And it means the world, it steadies him, keeps him afloat. James’s fingers are a lifeline, and Clover is lucky, so unbelievably lucky to have this lifeline amidst the storm. Too lucky, to the point it’s unjust. 

“To be perfectly fair, sir, what Tyrian did to me was kind of my fault and -”

“You remember. Why didn’t you tell me.”

It’s not even a question. James knows Clover remembers now. The headmaster’s hand, for all of his currently weakened state, transmutes into an iron grip. And the Ace Op knows he needs to be strong too, that James could kill Tyrian but couldn’t kill the ghosts of the past, and the only way Clover could push them back, to push back the trauma of what happened on the tundra, is to push forward. To keep his head high, his shoulders squared, and keep moving forward. 

“Because you wanted to know about the Maidens and the Relics and I was worried for you.”

“Do not coddle me, Clover, and do not hide things from me, or else... you know I’ll figure them out.”

“Yes, sir… You know you could just have told me what happened to me, right?”

Clover thought it would’ve hurt. It’d have hurt James and Qrow too much to even think about it, let alone explaining it. They must’ve thought it’d have hurt him, too. But now he knows and… it doesn’t hurt as much as it should. Yet. It doesn’t hurt as much as he’d have wanted to, because at least he’d have paid the rightful price for his own mess-ups that day. His own mess-ups that caused Tyrian to escape, that caused James to have to hunt him down, and get poisoned as a result… 

“Clover, how are you feeling?”

Numb. Too numb. So numb that he wishes the pain that should be there would wash away the blankness. That he wishes he was the one in that bed instead of Ironwood, the ever unlucky counterpart to his own fortunate self, that he was the one in pain after having avenged himself. That he wishes James hadn’t robbed him of his own revenge. That he wishes James had taken different decisions instead of overreacting about Tyrian, about everything. That the fact that James would sacrifice himself without the slightest shadow of a doubt doesn’t make it right that he sacrificed so many others in the process, and Clover can’t stand by that any more... 

Where is his luck now when he most needs it? He gained the slightest sliver of certainty that the feelings he harboured for James are perhaps reciprocated, reciprocated in the General’s own way… by risking his life, his Orca, risking everything just to eradicate even the most infinitesimal probability of Tyrian hurting Clover or Qrow again. And yet, the Ace Op cannot give in to these feelings now, cannot give in to Ironwood’s protection, his trust, his touch, when he cannot support his General’s decisions any more, cannot stand for his commanding officer’s disproportionate plans putting James himself and others at risk.

“About what?”

Too many feelings spiralling out in too many directions, and he can’t tell which is forward. To focus on moving forward, as his mind repeats this mantra as if to barrage the onslaught of feelings that threaten to break through, to break him. 

“About what you remembered.”

Shoulders squared. Head high. Keep moving forward.

“I… I don’t know. I need some time to think. If your offer to be discharged from my commission is still on the table, I’ll take it. I just… need some time.”

He just needs time to himself. Time to breathe, to reflect, time to take in everything. But not right now, right now he must keep moving forward. 

“Granted, ex-Operative.”

He has to stay strong, to keep moving forward. For James, to make James’s sacrifice to take out Tyrian worth something. For Robyn, and her team who must be awaiting him now. For Qrow and Winter down in Mantle who must be expecting news from him, for Mantle itself because there’s still so much to fight for, for everyone.

_ Keep. _

“Oh, and Clover?”

_ Moving. _

“Yes?”

_ Forward.  _

“Good luck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter we’ll figure out what operation sheepwreck is about. Next chapter. I promise. (it’s not that terrible. Sheepwreck, I mean, not next chapter.)  
> Am I the only one who’s low-key mad that the HH except Robyn have the same weapon? I find it stupid both in-universe and out, in terms of themes and such. Also it doesn’t make for the most interesting fight scenes, but one can work with it… ok I’ll stop rambling.   
> This chapter was hell to write, I just had to post it so I’d stop editing it and tinkering with it. Next chapter will feature team QCRWN shenanigans, so stay tuned for that xx


	14. Like wolves in sheep's clothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of the second half of the last chapter? Idk. It’s a wild one anyway.  
> Warnings: minor mention of suicide ideation (don’t worry, it’s just a misunderstanding), swearing

“If you don’t want a wig, Ice Queen, I’ll cut and dye your hair myself,” Qrow threatens in a low grumble. “How many times do I need to tell you? You’re too recognisable here in Mantle with all the videos of you around the place, and that’s a liability if we’re to stay here until we find the kids.”

Her regal expression never leaving her face, Winter effectuates her closest approximation to a pout, before untying her hair bun in one smooth gesture, smooth silvery locks cascading down her slender shoulders. She exchanges a quick look with Neo, whom they tied up to the hotel room’s only chair and gagged for good measure. With a blink and a flourish of crystalline particles, the prisoner materialises a dark beanie and rectangular glasses onto the specialist, causing the shifter’s jaw to drop in realisation that wig or not, she looks… different. 

Rubbing his tired temples, he wonders how long he’ll have to keep up with the antics of Ice Queen and Ice Cream. 

“And ditch the uniform too,” he groans. “The white can be spotted from a mile away.”

“Not when it’s snowing, idiot.”

“It’s not snowing anymore,” he counters, furtively glancing out the window. “And no one in Mantle ever wears that. At least have a look at the clothes I got you.”

He hands her a plastic bag full of garments within which she takes a small peak, immediately wrinkling her nose in response.

“How come you get to go shopping in public without a disguise, when you won’t let me out of this room?” she complains. 

“Because I’m a spy and not a public figure, unlike you, people don’t know what my face looks like,” he shrugs, dragging the only item he bought for himself out of the bag: a long, black, boring pea coat, perfect to blend into the chilly nights of Mantle. 

“I’m going to the bathroom to try these on,” the Atlesian announces. “If you let the prisoner escape, I will personally execute you.”

“By beating me to death with that huge stick up your ass? Be my guest.”

Scowling at him, Winter slams the bathroom door shut, leaving Qrow alone with Neo. The shapeshifter quietly walks to the small woman’s side, swiftly undoing her gag while whispering into her ear:

“Pretty sure you’re mute, so you don’t need this, but I think Ice Queen didn’t get the memo. You can still hear me, right?”

She nods, her tri-coloured hair brushing against his shirt while her agile hand, still bound to the back of the chair, wanders off toward his pocket to…

“C’mon, that’s the _last_ cookie,” he bemoans as she tosses it into the air with a flick of her tied wrist and catches it with her recently freed mouth. “You could’ve asked… oh right. Not like I love cookies or anything, I just kept some for in case we find...”

With a sad tilt of her head and another rain of mirror-like fragments, Neo turns into the splitting image of an immediately recognisable red-caped girl.

“Yeah, Ruby,” he exhales, his heart suddenly clenching at the sight of his niece’s look-alike bound to the cheap hotel chair. 

“...What’s going on here?” a shocked voice comments from the door, causing Neo’s projection to shatter immediately in a myriad of shimmering shards, reverting her to her original form. 

Qrow turns to the newcomer at the room door - and immediately starts gaping. Gaping like the door before it eventually swivels closed behind Clover. 

Clover, who just entered the room, dressed in _civvies_. A cozy-looking, cable-knit forest green jumper, sleeveless of course, echoes the stunning colour of his eyes. From under the sweater a simple white shirt emerges, but the sleeves are rolled up all the way, so that’s cheating. At his belt, small asymmetric silver chains dangle, allowing him to attach his pin and the remainder of his good luck charms, along with other shiny trinkets Qrow hasn’t seen before. Slightly distressed black jeans complete the ensemble that would blend in perfectly in Mantle’s streets. 

“Hey, five o-clock shadow,” a voice from behind Clover greets, and only then Qrow notices he hasn’t come alone. “Just so you know, for your own safety, the door lock was laughably easy to pick.”

“Robyn? What are you doing here? Did you verify what Cinder claimed?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the blonde retorts, “but we were running on kind of a tight schedule, with jailbreak and all that...”

“It kind of slipped my mind,” Clover admits with a small shrug, and the shifter swears he did it on purpose so crimson eyes can watch the brief bulging of his muscular shoulders as they move and forgive him for everything. 

“But you had time to get a change of clothes?”

“Operation sheepwreck,” Robyn grins brightly, watching Qrow’s brow furrowed in confusion. 

“It was a CRME thing back at the academy,” her former teammate clarifies, “which consists in raiding my closet for all the warm woolen clothes. May somehow pulled that off while we were on the run. She and the rest of the team are at the Happy Huntresses HQ now, locking Watts up in the broom closet. Watts turned the heating system back on.”

“Right, that’s why it’s not snowing anymore,” crimson eyes blink in understanding.

“Yup.”

“Are you on the run too?” the scythe-wielder asks, nodding toward Clover. 

“I resigned my commission.”

_What?_

“And… Jimmy was okay with that?” Qrow comments tentatively.

“Jimmy didn’t have much of a say...”

“What did the General say?” Winter interrupts, erupting out of the bathroom with her new undercover outfit. 

“Looking good, snow angel,” the Happy Huntress comments, lilac eyes trailing up and down the dark sleeveless turtleneck, the matching pencil skirt, and the thick poncho displaying earthly colours following the latest Mantle trends. “I dig the sexy librarian style.”

“Why thank you, Miss Hill,” the specialist nods elegantly. “All thanks to Qrow’s sharp fashion sense, albeit not as sharp as his tongue.”

Clover gulps at that, and Qrow notices how stiffly he’s been standing so far, guessing that something must’ve gone wrong… The shapeshifter mentally berates himself for his pessimistic outlook, that decades of living with his Semblance have eased him into, and forces himself into formulating a more balanced point of view. 

On the bright side, Robyn’s presence means she could have contacts who know where the kids are, and Neo’s Semblance would be an advantage for this kind of hide-and-seek operation. However, who exactly has their party amassed? A famed politician infamous for her hot-headedness, two high-profile officers from the Atlesian military who stand out like sore thumbs just from the ramrod straight way they carry themselves, not that anything else about them is straight, a chaotic criminal with a knack for stealing cookies… and the legendary Qrow Branwen, baker extraordinaire and harbinger of misfortune. 

Cursing under his breath, Qrow thought this would be easy, that their group were small enough to hide in the streets and wait in a bar or something until the kids inevitably drifted in to buy food or watch the news to keep updated with the political situation and their friends and families’ whereabouts. But now, he’s considering doing things the harder, faster, dirtier way. Not that any of the parties present would actually approve. 

“So what did the General say?” the white-haired woman repeats. 

“Not very much, in his poisoned state...”

“... What??” Winter and Qrow manage to gasp at the same time. 

“Care to tell me why you didn’t start with that, lucky charm? Would you even have told us if we didn’t ask?” the older huntsman comments after a tense silence. “And here I thought you cared.”

Qrow knows it hurts. It’s supposed to hurt. But it’s necessary for the dirty, fast, hard way of doing things.

“I...” the former operative starts, at loss for words, still too unemotional to the shifter’s liking. “We have a lot to go through...”

“You know what? Forget about excuses. I’m gonna take a walk to process things. I’ll be right back.”

And knocking the window ajar, he shape shifts and flies out into the street. 

“That’s not taking a _walk_ ,” Robyn protests, throwing her hands up in the air. 

“What are you waiting for, you dolt?” Winter adds, turning toward the ex-Ace Op. “Go follow him. We can take care of keeping the prisoner.”

“Yeah, good luck with that, sly fox,” the politician waves vaguely as he swiftly exits through the door. “What’s up with that? Why is this cute girl tied up? Is the General going on arresting sprees again?”

“She worked for Cinder,” the specialist explains, “though I’m not sure why, now she’s with us for the cookies but it remains unclear whether we can trust her yet.”

But that’s not enough to deter Robyn, though the blonde does lift a brow at the mention of cookies, before making her way to Neo’s chair and leaning down to face her eye to eye.

”What’s up, Ice Cream? Judging by your relation with the authorities, I’m sure you could make a good Happy Huntr-”

The politician suddenly pauses as the criminal cocks her head, eyes suddenly gleaming an excited shade of pink. And slamming both her boots into the floor with all her strength, Neo effectuates a triple backflip to crash into the nearest wall, the chair she was bound to breaking under the impact. Her Aura flickers briefly at the hard collision, but she lands untied and unscathed in a low crouch, mismatched eyes considering the two taller women defiantly. 

Winter instantly draws her sword, but Robyn shoots first. Neo evades easily, flowing like water into the specialist’s general direction as the bolt hits the wallpaper, releasing a puff of moldy dust. As the dirt settles, the crossbow-wielder eyes the room to see not one, but two Winter Schnees staring at one another with identical disapproving smirks. Unfazed, Robyn loads new projectiles and aims successively at both of them. Her brow furrowing slightly at the arrow flying toward her, the real specialist lifts a hand, eliciting a glyph that reflects the dart straight at the copycat. Both arrows meet their target - which dissolves in a clatter of shimmering shapes. 

Sneering at them from the desk by the window as she picks up her parasol with a playful cartwheel, Neo flicks the glass panel open with the tip of her shoe. And somersaults out the window, deploying her umbrella on the way down. 

“Dammit,” Robyn hisses. 

“Language,” Winter snaps back, eyes narrowing in focus as a new glyph forms in her palm. 

A slight breeze shakes the room… and a second later, a summoned flock of silver birds drag Neo back through the window. Without hesitation, Winter lunges forward toward the fugitive - but stops dead in her steps when pleading blue eyes stare back at her, the spitting image of her sister suddenly facing her. Pale fingers shaking around the hilt of her sword, the Atlesian only faintly hears a Dust round shooting out of Robyn’s weapon, before a solid block of ice blossoms from the floor, keeping Neo’s feet encased before she can escape.

“Not bad,” the blonde appraises, “not bad at all. You’d have beaten two of the top huntresses in Solitas on your own, if you’d known of anyone I care about. Not that I have that many living relatives anyway, after Callows decided to murder most my friends and supporters who were still alive. Come to the Happy Huntress HQ with me, and we’ll get milk and cookies.”

Winter makes a point to shoot the other two her darkest, most disdainful glare. 

* * *

“Think I didn’t notice you? Your footsteps have the subtlety of booming thunder to whomever has ears, lucky charm,” Qrow speaks through gritted teeth, without turning back. 

“What can I say? You’ve got the trained hearing of a spy,” Clover shrugs, trailing a few steps behind the shapeshifter, who’s actually taking a walk down the street just as he promised instead of flying, as if wanting to be followed. 

“Care to tell me why you’re following me?”

“You forgot your jacket.”

Qrow feels a soft object thrown into his shoulder and recognises his new black pea coat, which he slides into without losing time, shielding himself from the icy Mantle winds. Behind him, Clover’s footsteps are as deliberate and regular as ever, with the precise pulsation of a steady heartbeat.

“Qrow, what’s wrong?” 

The scythe-wielder still finds himself shivering slightly, but of course Clover is unaffected, all too used to the sleeveless lifestyle and apparently unaffected by everything these days, including Jimmy getting poisoned… The younger man must be repressing his emotions about recent events so strongly just to remain on top of things, repressing in a way that will only hurl him straight to his breaking point, and Qrow wishes it wouldn’t have to be that way. 

“How can you be so _calm_?” he erupts finally.

“Because I have to, that’s the least I can do! James went after Callows and offed him on his own, he managed but got poisoned. I saw him in the hospital. He’s weakened, but stable. He’ll be fine.”

“I get that, Tyrian did the same to me a while back, remember? I survived even without medical attention for days, so I doubt his life is on the line. But still, you could’ve told me -”

“He did this for us. And the least we can do is to be strong, for him. Not to dwell on what already happened and continue to fight. To protect Mantle from the Grimm. To find the kids. And eventually to find a way to kick that giant whale out of the sky, because there might be no gods above now, but the playing field is still not even when that’s still looming above our heads. We have to stay calm to avoid attracting the Grimm, to serve the greater good, if we want James’s sacrifice to matter.”

In many ways, Clover’s right. Reasonable. Perfect. As always. So perfect it hurts, and what Qrow’s about to do hurts even more. But he has to do it - there are no gods above, no gods to judge how twisted, treacherous, dirty his plan is - as long as it works. And it might yet be the quickest, least deadly way to get to his goal.

“Maybe it matters, but it doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do. What happened to trusting one another, talking to one another? Jimmy may have been lucky this time, but what if he goes off the rails again, and we’re not there for him? What will he do to others? To himself? Aren’t you scared?”

“I’m not… well, maybe I’m scared, I’m terrified, but right now it doesn’t matter, because Mantle’s streets are infested with Grimm so this is neither the place nor the time to be afraid.” 

Qrow has to lie to himself for the plan to work, has to appear like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, even to himself. And it isn’t hard for him to pretend to be scared, to give in to fear: so many things could go wrong around him at any moment, with his misfortune.

“How can you tell? Maybe there’s nothing you could have done because of your injury, but I could have helped, and that’s why I’m scared. I’m scared because I could’ve done something about it, and I didn’t. I’m scared because I’m scared of myself, of my Semblance, of messing up again as I always do. Jimmy should just have asked me to help instead of going off behind my back, if only he trusted me, if only I’d been trustworthy enough for him to believe in me. Tyrian and I had a score to settle -”

“And you’re brave enough to admit it, but it doesn’t make it right. Not in terms of law or duty, but in terms of the greater good. Both you and James put your personal vengeance before logic and the greater good, and look where that led him? And look where that led you, last time you faced Tyrian? To prioritising your score to settle over stopping a dangerous murderer -”

Something clicks in Qrow’s mind, and he doesn’t know whether it’s fortune or misfortune, but he doesn’t have to fake his fear any more. It’s like everything he’s been dreading for the past weeks has suddenly crashed down, his worst nightmares finally unfurling, inevitably under the pull of gravity, and his mind starts spiralling downwards, downwards...

“You remember… you remember it all, don’t you? What happened out there up until you almost died? I knew something was off with you as soon as you stepped into that room with Robyn.”

“I remember, but right now it doesn’t matter. I might be younger than you and James, but I’m not a child, I can handle myself.”

“How can you remember the horrors that happened out there, and stay this calm? This composed? This perfect?”

And every word the shifter says rings true, and it hurts like a broken bell’s vibration reverberating through his bones. Qrow doesn’t deserve Clover, who remains perfect through everything, for everyone, despite what happened to him, because of what happened to him and how that opened up his eyes on Qrow and James, on order and fortune. Qrow doesn’t deserve James, who only becomes more perfect after each injury, more sleek steel, less flawed flesh, who sacrificed himself and his humanity just so Qrow and Clover would be safe. 

Qrow doesn’t deserve them, he’s too dirty, too soiled… and yet, there’s no gods above, so it’s not about deserving. It’s about trying until something works, and Qrow’s dirty plan counts as trying.

“I can’t. I can’t outrun the trauma, it’ll catch up with me eventually. And maybe I’m a coward for not facing my trauma head first, maybe I’ve always been a coward. But I don’t care, because I can’t fall apart now. I have to stay strong for you and James, for Robyn, for Mantle... And I admire you for how brave you are for confronting your emotions, but please don’t panic in the middle of the street, just go somewhere -”

“Like where? To a bar so I can drink all my fears and my trauma away, as I used to? To do what, to act like a little heartless soldier, like a robot like Jimmy? Or like you, hiding from your emotions because you can’t accept that Tyrian ran my sword through your heart?”

Even without watching Clover’s reaction, he can tell his words hit just as hard through his chest as Harbinger had, if not more. And it’s dirty, and he knows it. And Clover’s hurting now, and he knows it. Because Clover hurting helps his plan, and right now, in their current situation, they need all the help they can get. 

“I know we should talk about this. But just wait until we’re somewhere where we won’t -”

“We won’t what? Attract the Grimm? How can you tell that’s not what I want?”

“...Qrow? What exactly are you trying to do?” Clover whispers after a moment of silence, his voice breaking suddenly, and Qrow knows if nothing he's said hurt before, this does. “Whatever you’re trying to do, please don’t let your pain overcome you, don’t draw in all the Grimm to obliterate them all until they finally get you or any of that. I’ve got enough of James trying to sacrifice himself at every turn, I can’t lose you that way too… You deserve so much more credit than you realise, you’re not beyond saving, you’re not beyond trust. Sure, you’ve messed up, we’ve all messed up, and we might all be beyond redemption now… but it doesn’t mean the only way we can make things right is to sacrifice ourselves and let the Grimm obliterate us, there must be another way...”

Qrow wants to tell him this isn’t what he means, that he doesn’t want to die at the mercy of the Grimm, but...

Just their luck, a horde of Sabyrs races down the corner of the road, charging straight toward them, toward the beacon of dark emotions they both project. The former Ace Op draws his weapon, and ignoring the tears streaming down his cheeks, immediately freezing at the contact with the cold air as if they never existed, he swings at one of the monsters, reels in his catch, slashes, slices, the fishing line flowing around them in a lethal dance. 

Some people bake cookies compulsively to cope… others fight for others with everything they’ve got, fight for what they haven’t lost yet, and transmute the ache into something unstoppable, indomitable - and Clover is one of these people. And it’s beautiful, _he’s_ beautiful, and Qrow just wants to hug him and tell him he’s sorry and it’s all going to be alright… 

But he just has to hold out a little longer, push his luck just a little more…

As he cuts down some Grimm left and right, slamming his sword down into a massive skull and transforming Harbinger in one fell swoop into a shotgun to take down more creatures before they can reach his partner, he hears heavy footsteps trampling the wary asphalt. Heavy footsteps, that announce what he’s been waiting for.

A giant Megoliath storms toward them, and immediately Clover’s hook sails through the air to meet it, catching one of its tusks and jabbing it onto a nearby, ruined wall, slowing its devastating run. As massive paws slide sideways against the frosty ground, Qrow runs in with his weapon in scythe mode, tripping the monster which ends up on its side, strong legs kicking wildly at the two huntsmen who duck and pounce to dodge. Blocking a gigantic knee with the flat of his blade, the scythe-wielder finds himself pushed back, sinking his blade into the floor to avoid sliding away. Ahead of him, the ex-soldier’s strong arms desperately tug at his rope to restrain two of the Grimm’s feet, however temporarily to give Qrow an opening. 

Drawing in a deep breath, the older man shapeshifts and soars vertically, amassing speed so he can shift back in mid-sky and slam down with all his human weight and that of his extended scythe onto the monster’s neck. Clover gasps as the powerful trunk swats him away like a fly into the wall - but just before his face meets the bricks, he presses the switch that twists his blade into its war scythe form, slicing off one the creature’s tusk still embedded in the wall. From the corner of his vision, Qrow witnesses his partner’s pin flicker when flicked, before Kingfisher tangles around the fallen bony appendage and drags it away - and the wall collapses, trapping the Megoliath underneath until it vanishes into a pillar of black smoke.

Staggering to his feet on the uneven rubble, the scythe-wielder positions himself next to Clover, ready to face the new trio of identical elephant-like Grimm headed in their direction. 

“Qrow? Are you okay?” the former Ace Op pants under his breath. 

Before he can answer, a phantomatic sword falls from the sky, impaling one of the creatures through the throat and causing it to dissolve dead in its tracks. Bright green lasers trail against the dull background, and a circle of floating swords twirls through the air, slashing at both remaining Grimm before a storm of red petals rebounds against the blades to boost its speed before landing ahead of the creatures. There is a flash of silver - and when it dies down, instead of three monsters, before Clover and Qrow’s eyes and below the vanishing silhouette of a ghostly Queen Lancer, are Mantle’s protector, flanked by two girls with a rapier and a scythe. 

“Uncle Qrow?” Ruby gasps. “We came because we saw the smoke rising from the Grimm but we didn’t know you were here...”

“Thanks for the save, pipsqueak… I hoped you’d come.”

As his voice trails off, Qrow’s chest swells with emotion, he’s so proud of his girls and guilty of his plan yet glad it helped him find them… he doesn’t know what else to say what to do how to breathe...

“Did you just use you and me as bait to lure in the Grimm and get to the kids?” 

The former Ace Op’s tone brings him back to reality. Ordinarily, Qrow would’ve sugar-coated it, said he wouldn’t phrase it this way, that it was a small price to pay to lure out his nieces, those nieces he’d been separated from for weeks. But still, it’s a price to pay, and the shapeshifter can’t stand lying to Clover any longer…

“Yes, I did.”

And just like that, the shock, the betrayal, the relief, the raw emotion finally overwhelms the makeshift barrage Clover’s mind had constructed to repress his own trauma, to deny his own memories, and all he can do as storm washes through him is to collapse in tears onto Qrow’s shoulder. 

* * *

Penny 2.0 doesn’t understand why Operative Ebi is crying. 

She can recognise tears, she remembers Ruby shedding them the day the previous Penny was destroyed, but she doesn’t remember why that was. 

It might be because Penny 2.0 doesn’t understand personal feelings. 

Or because Penny 2.0 has no data on what happened to Clover, Qrow, and Robyn on that mission to arrest Tyrian.

Or because this is grown-up stuff and she has been back as 2.0 for less than a year, her memories of her past self being but faded vignettes devoid of emotion, of pain, of trauma that would have surrounded her death. 

After all, it was easy for Pietro to erase that part from her database, to wash away the pain to make the memories neutral, so what does she know about what real humans go through?

All Penny 2.0 knows is that Mantle is all ashes and dirt now that the snow is melting. Melting to water, and water and tears turn the ash to mud. Soon, the mud will harden, uniting the soot particles together, as tightly as stone. 

All Penny 2.0 knows is that what they’ve all gone through, the tears they’ve shed will unite them together, as family. 

And everything will turn out all right, because they’re all together now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry. It gets better, I promise.  
> (Also the kids are back!!!!!!! I actually like how this chapter turned out but I’m so terrified for the next ones)  
> Next chapter on Wednesday, stay healthy and posted xx


	15. Like you’re on vacation or something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James needs a vacation.
> 
> Warnings: swearing, angst, SO MUCH ANGST

How much time has passed? James has been drifting in and out of consciousness at the slow lulling of the machines treating his blood, and he’s not sure whether the black and white corgi huddled up at his feet on his hospital bed is old news or not. Was it there the last time he woke up? Not that he’s complaining. He only wonders how Zwei got there, someone must have let him out of James’s quarters and sneaked him into the hospital room… But before he can elucidate the mystery, his mind already sinks back into fitful sleep. 

The next time he wakes - or is it the time after that? - it finally makes sense. Because in addition to the puppy still snoozing on his ankles, a blackbird is now cuddled up in the crook of his neck. His bed is full of canine hair and drool and feathers… Not that he’s complaining. Reassuring warmth radiates from both animals, and he wonders whether the best course of action would be to go back to sleep. 

After all, he’s exhausted, not just from the poison but also the drugs they gave him, including the faintly yellow, translucent drip by his bed injecting a serum that keeps his Aura deactivated so that the needles and machines can work on his blood under his skin. But something at the back of his mind is terrified that the corvid might not be there when he awakens next, so he has to fight to keep his eyes open. And talk to the bird currently twitching against his collarbone, no matter how insane everybody will think he is. 

“Qrow? Are you awake?”

The bird wants to respond, but only a tired caw comes out. He probably wants to shift back, the General realises, but this bed is unfortunately too tight for two and all the tubes and cables are inconveniently in the way. So Ironwood’s metal hand delicately scoops up the drowsy avian and drops it on the guest chair next to the bed, watching intently as it turns back to a raven-haired huntsman with dark bags under his vermillion eyes. 

“How’s things, Jimmy? Does it feel as terrible as I remember?”

“My situation is suboptimal,” James agrees grimly. “I have so much work, and I can’t do anything but sleep off the painkillers all day. I’m willing to bet your day was more eventful.”

“Never bet against someone with a luck-related Semblance,” the shapeshifter teases gruffly. “And at least now you’re forced to rest, treat it like you’re on vacation or something.”

“Vacation? Why, have we won the war? Is there any news?”

“Where to start… Cinder claims she destroyed the Relic of Knowledge so Salem could no longer reunite the gods. She wanted to get rid of higher powers to become a goddess of her own, but we put her in jail before she could really do that.”

It sounds a lot more anticlimactic than it should, Ironwood judges. No more gods, no more judgements… Did the war just end? Did the war he wanted to wage, the war he’d sacrifice anything to win, end completely behind his back while he was busy with his paranoia and with his concerns for Qrow and Clover’s health and safety?

“And the whale? And Salem? Does she know? Is she still there?”

“Nothing’s changed so far,” Qrow mumbles between gritted teeth. “I don’t know if she knows. I don’t know if Cinder told her, or if she has any way to figure it out. Or maybe she does know, but she wants to destroy Remnant herself now. She’s been at it for centuries, I don’t think it’ll be so easy to make her stop, even if pressing on defies any logic now.”

“I think I can relate,” the headmaster comments flatly, as they both know they’ve been fighting for too long, for as long as they can remember, and it’s hard to stop, breathe, and think of a different future of swirling possibilities. “But why would Cinder tell you all about her plans?”

“I’m nearly as clueless as you are on that one. So that we’d stop fighting as soon as we know the truth? Or so that we’d join the cult worshipping her as a new goddess, maybe she believed so in her arrogance? I thought at first she might seek your protection against Salem’s retribution, but she refused to hand herself in and gave us a hard time capturing her… so I don’t know.”

“I should have her interrogated.”

“It’s a dangerous task, interrogating a Maiden. She’s gotten stronger with her powers since the battle at Haven Academy.”

“I don’t have to risk my men’s lives for that. You and Clover reminded me of how important my men’s lives were. I could interrogate her myself.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Qrow growls as he leans forward in his chair. “You’re in no condition for that. Last time you pulled a stunt like that and insisted to go on a mission on your own, you ended up in this hospital bed with Tyrian’s poison in your bloodstream.”

“It was worth it, he murdered countless people, and _he hurt you and Clover_ -”

“Right, he hurt us to the point I can’t enjoy sushi anymore, and lucky charm won’t wear plunging shirts showing his pecs anymore. We’re both peachy now, Jimmy. What happened to us didn’t call for you going all out with bombs and machine guns to wipe that one guy off the surface of Remnant. That was a little overkill, wasn’t it?”

“What else could I have done? Let Tyrian roam free? Sent more soldiers who could’ve gotten themselves killed?”

“You could have told me about it! I’d have told you the most reasonable plan was to send the Ace Ops.”

“The Ace Ops are to defend Atlas at all times. Because we all know what happened last time we sent all our forces to Mantle and left ourselves unguarded.”

“You could’ve sent me, or Clover and me after he’d recovered, we’ve dealt with Tyrian before and we’d have known what to do.”

“You’d have known what to do? Like that went so well last time you fought him, and Clover didn’t end up stabbed through the chest and almost dying? I know you two would have preferred confronting him personally, if not just to obtain closure, but I precisely wanted to avoid that you two risked your lives to settle your score with him, and if there were even the most infinitesimal probability of him hurting either of you I had to make absolutely sure I eradicated it.”

“You have a lot of trouble with probabilities, for someone who likes to surround himself with people with probability-altering Semblances. But I’m realising now you’re a good General for times of peace.”

“...Thank you?” James’s brow furrows in confusion as he shifts uncomfortably among the bedsheets.

“If this was the price to pay to preserve the peace, if the smallest probability that Tyrian did something would spark war, then going out yourself on your best war ship just to hunt down one Faunus just minding his own business in the middle of Mantle would’ve been worth it. _Maybe_. But right now, in the middle of the war, risking your own life as General and wrecking your ship just as a precaution in case Callows decides to act up isn’t the best allocation of resources.”

“Don’t you think I’m _trying_ to do what’s best, based on what I know?”

“Come to think of it, I can’t hold it against you. It’s been a long time since the Kingdoms were at war. Sure, you had to fight some Grimm here and there, you had to face some accidents like in that Dust mine… but Atlas hasn’t been under invasion or siege where anyone could die tomorrow and survival is key. Not for a long time, until now. I would be able to tell, I grew up outside the Kingdoms, and in the tribe everyday could mean raiding or being raided, and every day’s goal was to be strong enough to survive till the next one.”

James’s head hurts now, and he begins to think he preferred Qrow in his crow form due to the lack of talking, but then he’d rather hear human speech than indignant cawing.

“You and Clover think you know what I’m going through and that it gives you the right to patronise me. I rid you of your enemy who dared harm you, and that’s how you two are thanking me?”

“Oh, Clover said we should make your sacrifice count for something, by keeping on the fight against Salem. But even if it counts, that doesn’t make it the right thing to do.”

James wants to argue back, but another urgency comes to mind as he processes what his former Ace Op captain said to Qrow...

“You saw Clover? How has he been faring since he remembered?”

“So you know he remembered? Did you tell him?” the shifter snaps back, a hard glint in his defiant crimson eyes. 

“No, and I am inferring neither did you. We were both too busy dreading the day he’d remember to dare tell him.”

Ironwood’s lips quiver slightly at those words, but a strange wave of relief washes through him - they don’t have to tiptoe around the truth any more, that burden was taken away from their shoulders, from their damaged hearts. But someone or something else took care of it, took control of their destinies, and it’s like Cinder ending the war for them, but somehow worse. Infinitely worse, because Clover losing his mind, losing his perfect self following what Tyrian did to him is something James would have sacrificed everything to avoid, yet cannot avoid.

Lurching away from his chair, Qrow moves to the windowsill, his cape cutting a sanguine silhouette against the colourless background of snowy Atlas when he finally speaks in shaky syllables.

“I... don’t know how Clover’s doing. He’s shut down completely, he hardly even wants to talk to anybody. Last I heard he was searching for some rope.”

“... Rope? Qrow, I’m sorry.”

How hopeless, how pitiful were his efforts, James muses. Even after he’s avenged Clover a thousandfold by reducing Tyrian to some red stain beneath the belly of the Orca, he can’t protect the former Ace Op from the trauma, can’t protect him from the ghosts of the past haunting his every dream and poisoning his every waking moment until waking isn’t worth it anymore. What’s the use of the largest armada in Remnant, with the Orca and so many more vessels and airships, what’s the use of Atlas’s full military might in Ironwood’s ruined hands, if he can’t rewrite the past, can’t make it an absolute certainty that Clover will ever recover?

“Rope, to tie knots with. It’s a fisherman thing. Don’t worry, there’s no way in Remnant that I or the kids would let him get his hands anywhere close to a piece of rope.”

Too much information, too many entangled probabilities for James’s exhausted mind to process at once, but one idea stands out. Zwei pants nervously at his feet.

“The kids?”

There is a subtle shift in Qrow’s shoulders, tensing like a bird’s wings ready to take flight, to escape away into the white skies. But James notices it, he’s known the shifter for too long not to notice. Qrow stares far into the distance when he answers.

“We found them in the end. We may have lost Clover’s sanity on the way. But you’d probably have said it was worth it.”

The scythe-wielder’s tone is far too weary to contain any bite to it, but James still doesn’t like where the conversation is going. 

“Qrow, what have you done?”

“I confronted him so our amplified negative emotions would lure in big enough Grimm to be noticeable. The kids are good Huntresses and Huntsmen, of course they’d follow wherever the Grimm were going.”

The General sighs deeply, ignoring how the beeping tracking his vitals peaks at that. That plan definitely reached closer to home than anything he expected.

“...That’s an Ironwood manoeuvre if I’ve ever seen one,” James says finally.

“Figured you’d be proud of me,” Qrow scoffs, and the headmaster can almost hear the sad smirk in his voice.

“I am, and I’ve always been.” 

And it’s the truth in more ways than one, in so many ways that words cannot express.

“Why do I sense a ‘but’.”

The shifter swivels slowly to face James, running long ivory fingers through his ashen hair, and the General’s breath hitches ever so slightly.

“Because you can’t take a compliment?”

“Touché.”

They both giggle like schoolkids for a few seconds. For a few weightless seconds, before the weight of the world returns crashing on their shoulders again at full force.

“The Winter Maiden,” James resumes tentatively.

“So that was the ‘but’. Now we’ve regrouped with the kids, you want me to hand you Penny so you can do whatever with the Staff.”

“I am considering my options.”

“But you want the girl.”

“She is a Maiden and an android. She is Atlas property.”

Qrow’s eyes flare an irate shade of red, and gods isn’t it just breathtakingly beautiful. 

“She is a _person_ ,” he snarls, “and one of my nieces’ closest friends at that, so she’s practically _family_.”

“I’m sorry for my choice of words, Qrow, but Penny might be as important to you as she is to me, to Atlas, to all of Remnant. And I need her here, and you know I’ll stop at nothing until we can get her to open the Vault. I just wished you’d make things a lot easier.”

“Swooping so low as to blackmail me, huh? So what, you’re gonna destroy everything on your way until you get to her?”

“It’s your choice to make, not mine.”

The silence is heavy, rhythmed by the regular tunes of life support machines. Of course Qrow wouldn’t entrust him with a child, after he admitted to shooting a teen down a Vault.

“And you think I’ll fall for it… just because I used human lives as bait once, okay, a handful of times, doesn’t mean that I’m willing to take a child by force and hand her to you like an object, while I can’t tell what you’ll do to her if she doesn’t cooperate. I might not be redeemable in the eyes of the gods or something for my sins, but you know what? The gods may never come and _I don’t give a damn_! It’s not because I’ve messed up once that I can’t try again, try until I manage to do a good thing or two. And it’s not because you panicked and established martial law and shot a kid once that you can’t get better. Clover said even those who messed up and hurt others should have a chance to try again, that the only redemption possible shouldn’t be death or self-sacrifice. We don’t get to stop trying to move forward, we don’t get to give up. You don’t get to give up, because that’s unfair, and you’re better than that!”

Qrow has no right to speak words like that. And Clover even less. Because James cares about them too much to let them sink so low, to let them be broken enough for such thoughts to leak through the cracks in the first place.

“I have to make the hard choices so others don’t have to, others like Penny and Winter, others like the Ace Ops, others like Clover and you. I get to sacrifice my humanity so you don’t have to.”

“Why you and not someone else?”

“Because I’ve been broken for so long already, there’s no hope left for me, and you know the past can’t be erased.”

James looks down at his familiar prosthetic side, at his new collection of scars that continues to accumulate, never entirely fading.

“Who gives you the right to decide that?”

“I’m the Genera-”

“Bullshit! I call bullshit on that. And all those who care about you call bullshit on that too, because it hurts us to see you hurt yourself like that, to see you give your health and your heart away like that.”

In his whole, broken life, the General has never been so... fascinated by anyone daring to interrupt him. Qrow stomps back to the bedside, his slender silhouette towering over James, and if that’s not a sight to behold, Ironwood doesn’t what is. 

“Nobody can care for real without ulterior motives, because of my rank and my status...”

“I care! Maybe you don’t have that much family left alive. Maybe your little soldiers were trained to be heartless, or they’re jealous or something like that, and it’s really lonely at the top. Maybe even your previous team back at the Academy’s got their hands too full with other things to show they care… Willow’s too busy drinking herself into forgetting she’s Jacques’s wife, that Lagune kid died, and Watts… well, is being Dr. Arthur fucking Watts and he’s locked up in a closet somewhere. But the fact your team can’t care about you doesn’t make it right to sacrifice yourself. Because I care about you. And I’m terrified. Because _I don’t want to lose you_. And I’m sure Clover would say the same.”

Each word sounds like a broken plea, as the huntsman’s voice rasps and his hands are shaky against the side of James’s bed, fingers blanching under his desperate grip. Yet each word is a betrayal. Qrow doesn’t get to do that. Qrow doesn’t get to be the General’s hero and protector, because there need be only one protector and hero who gets to shoulder the weight of Atlas and the world, only one James Ironwood, and the spot is already taken. 

“And if you don’t want to lose me, why won’t you let me be who I am? You assume I’m sacrificing who I am for a greater cause, for those I care about, to become some kind of hero who’ll leave a mark in history. But you’ve never thought that this isn’t a sacrifice to me, because what I do is as natural as waking up every morning, as breathing, l as existing, and being Atlas’s protector is just who I’ve always been? Maybe I’m like Salem, and I can’t stop myself from pressing on even if there’s no relics, no gods, no possible victory now? Maybe I’m beyond saving now, and have always been, because you can’t save me from who I am?”

Qrow’s eyes are russet as embers, but as tears well at the corner of his eyelids their flame flickers, and that mere sight hurts. It hurts, because throughout so many years of knowing the shifter, so many years of sweat, blood, drunkenness, of collecting the broken pieces of each other to keep pressing on, Ironwood’s never seen Qrow let the flame die out. Never seen him give up on hope entirely, even facing the darkest news, the deepest shadows, never seen him stop moving forward. And yet, the General just begged him to drown out the flame, just carved a bottomless rift between them, just asked him to stop caring, to stop pressing on, because Ironwood is beyond salvation now, and it’s not worth seeing Qrow hurt himself for a fight that can’t be won.

When he next figures what to say, the shapeshifter’s tone reeks with unfurled frustration.

“Fuck you, Jimmy.”

In the distance, a machine beeps indignantly as its screen flickers off and back on, no doubt under the effect of Qrow’s misfortune.

“Be my guest.”

Just as dismayed, James waves to all of himself with his wary metal hand. The scythe-wielder provides a low chortle, breathtaking in its unbridled sadness.

“James Ironwood making puns?” he murmurs in mirthless resignation. “That poison’s gotten you real bad, huh?”

James expects him to give up, for his Semblance to flare out of tear-ridden vermillion eyes, or for him to shapeshift and fly away. All these outcomes are probable. But none occurs. 

Instead, Qrow leans down and kisses him. 

Soft, slightly chapped lips crash desperately against the General’s own, and James finds himself gasping into the kiss, overwhelmed by the melancholy, the regret, the unconditional _love_ poured into their searing contact, seeping through each of the cracks of the headmaster’s ruined heart, each of the wounds of his scarred soul. There is violence as their tongues battle relentlessly, yet it’s not enough, because each of Qrow’s moves is a futile attempt at mending James while all the Atlesian begs for is to be broken down further, not fixed. Because he’s beyond fixing now, has always been beyond fixing. 

When James breaks the kiss for air, they both know that didn’t fix it. Neither of them was magically healed, neither had their sins forgiven, neither had their scars erased, neither can be redeemed, even by love. Because if trying to save one another from the world, from themselves, again and again until inevitably failing, and then picking themselves up and trying illogically again isn’t love, then they don’t know what is.

Because this _is_ love. 

But it can’t fill the rift between them.

But this is love.

“You knew that wouldn’t work,” Ironwood says. “Why did you do it?”

“I had to try. Always have to try.”

With his Semblance, the scythe-wielder is used to things not working on the first try, he once said, and James believes him. The General blinks and sucks in another deep breath. 

“So let me try again. Please consider bringing me the Winter Maiden. I’ll let you know of all my plans for her, agree to every of your terms, I won’t force her into anything, and you can be there every step of the Vault opening way with her, and then leave and I’ll let her go. Just please take her to me.”

He knows the answer before hearing Qrow’s voice, before even daring to stare back at those mesmerising red eyes, rife with despair.

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

“But I won’t.”

“And I respect that.”

The shifter’s thumb caresses the Atlesian’s bearded jaw with infinite gentleness, infinite resignation, and the slightest hint of a hesitation.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you...”

James might be a poor politician, out-debated by even Qrow at every turn in so many words, but he can end the argument and finish the sentence Qrow can’t finish, in so few words. 

“It’s that you don’t trust yourself, and you think you and I are not so different.”

It’s not even a question. The General might not be very perceptive, but he’s known the shifter for long enough for it to be a question.

“... Yes.”

Qrow’s gravelly voice brings rough, yet soothing balm to James’s ruined heart. Zwei yawns heavily, prompting both men to fight a yawn; outside the window the sunset brings meagre colour to the desaturated clouds.

“You should get going. Keep me posted on if Clover’s all right, he’s not answering his Scroll and I doubt he’ll respond before a while.”

James doesn’t know what he’ll do, if Qrow doesn’t come back. Can he save himself, if Qrow or Clover aren’t there to try and save him?

“Sure.”

“Promise me? Promise me you’ll be back to tell me?”

“I’ll come back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They’re in love. They disagree. But they’re in love.  
> I’m pretty sure Ironwood’s canon redemption arc will be through death or self-sacrifice at the last minute. And I respect that, I kinda do (if it’s not stupidly written like SOME people’s deaths). But I just wanna imagine an alternate reality where that needn’t be the case, where they can just keep trying until they maybe get something right, consequences and all.  
> (This chapter is kind of transitional between this arc and the next). Next chapter on Saturday xx


	16. Rope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Uh so a thing I didn’t mention - in my headcanon, Atlas has tower infrastructures to catch water condensation i.e. clouds in the air and use that as drinkable water. I assume that’s always been sufficient to meet the city’s water needs, so this hasn’t changed now and the only resources they could run out of are food and Dust. Not related to the chapter but I only just realised that may be a plot hole so there you go.)  
> WARNINGS: depression, mentions of alcohol and past alcoholism, mentions of V7E12 (enough to deserve a warning and to break the title). **This chapter was honestly tricky to write in the beginning, if the depression and self-blame stuff is too much, skip to the double horizontal line and start reading from there.**

There is no rope.

* * *

There is darkness. The basement is ripe with humidity, flooded with darkness. 

It’s dark, but it's too bright compared to his mind. Silent, but it's too loud compared to his mind.

Clover brings his hands to his ears. 

How long has he been here, alone in the basement? 

He can’t tell, why should it matter? The others are upstairs, and they’re too loud, but at least, they’re safe in the small Mantle house.

They’re safe. From him. 

Because Clover was lucky last time that all his terrible decisions only reflected on him, that he was the one to get grievously hurt, and not others. (And not Qrow or James.)

Clover was unbelievably lucky. After all, he’s been told his Semblance is good fortune. But nothing is certain now.

He might not be as lucky next time.

That’s the only certainty in this bottomless pit of darkness that’s his mind. Somewhere at the back of his consciousness, he senses he could use it to start to climb out. Climb upward, out of the darkness, forever. 

But he can’t climb out. Because there is no rope.

* * *

There is darkness.

Loneliness. Because he cast everyone out, out of his personal darkness, out of the cellar where they leave him undisturbed most of the time. There was that one time where Briar came down to ask him if he wanted anything. And that other time Winter’s high heels came clicking through the damp dark, along with the angry clinks of glass against glass. But she didn’t really address him, because he doesn’t want to confront anyone, doesn’t want anyone to get hurt because of his own hubris and stupidity. 

Last time he was lucky he was the one who got hurt. That got almost killed. 

(Next time he might not be so lucky.) 

And now he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. Least of all Qrow. 

Or Robyn. 

He’d known Robyn for years before… before it happened. They’d met during initiation back at the Academy, fought a pack of Sabyrs back to back before they’d even exchanged a word. And yet, in the face of imminent death, when Tyrian crashed their airship into the ground, he’d not even spoken a word, not even stolen a glance at her before kicking the door open and jumping ship to save his own skin. 

Team CRME was the talk of the town back in the day, walking down the chattering corridors while Robyn chased the female suitors that flocked after her team leader, by relentlessly flirting with them until they abandoned or went after her instead. Boisterous banter among the team, synchronised strides down the hallways, the scent of raisin and chocolate chip cookies wafting through amphitheaters in their wake… incomplete memories he still hasn’t pieced together like so many stained glass fragments. And yet, standing before his comatose ex-teammate, Clover hadn’t hesitated to bargain her life against Qrow’s surrender.

And Qrow… how could Clover have prioritised caging a free bird over all else? He still doesn’t remember what he and the shifter had going on, and how that could’ve affected his long-standing feelings for James, but they were _something_ . Clover is still but vaguely aware he’s been a fan of Huntsman Branwen’s work since his Academy days, and if _something_ was nothing more, at least there was respect. At least enough _respect_ for Clover to consider Qrow and his legendary skill, perhaps rightfully so, no one would be able to tell, a larger threat than the demented scorpion-tailed killer they’d previously arrested and subdued. 

He remembers the indignation, the betrayal when the shifter wouldn’t reciprocate that respect, instead turning his back at Clover as if he didn’t matter, as if his talents weren’t a threat, to charge after Tyrian. Because that criminal scum and their vengeful score to settle was worth more than Clover, more than their fight, than their clashing ideals, than whatever respectful _something_ they had going on.

So much respect for the older huntsman’s skills, and so little for his feelings, for whatever _something_ they had going on, and Clover’s failure to team up with Qrow forced the scythe-wielder to league up with Salem’s servant against the Ace Op. 

Which led not only to Clover being injured, but to the serial killer they had to arrest escaping and wreaking more chaos in Mantle, causing James to have to go after him and get poisoned. 

James - that Clover had failed to save. From Tyrian. And from himself. For all the blossoming feelings he’d had toward his commanding officer over the years, he’d been unable to recognise his spiralling into paranoid dictatorship, his crossing of lines that shouldn’t be crossed, if such a line can even be identified. If only he’d been able to make James see the truth about his orders instead of following them blindly. If only he’d saved his General from his own moral downfall in the first place, because no one deserves to be allowed to fall, least of all James. 

Clover thought the brunt of the pain would be from the wound on his chest, from the physical ache. But right now what hurts is realising how easy it was for him to swoop so low; to take all the wrong decisions. How easy it had been to turn his back on his friends and loved ones when it mattered most. How easy it had been to become a piece in the heartless machine that turns a kingdom into a dictatorship, thoughtlessly carrying out questionable orders...

Amidst the onset of war, the thundering footsteps of the Grimm and the looming shadow of Salem’s whale, freedom had come to die, tyranny had come to rise, and it’s his fault too, because Clover didn’t realise and now it’s too late. 

It’s all his fault, he got himself into this mess and he should get out of it, _alone_.

* * *

When she was asked why she called her first child Clover, Alcyone Ebi looked into the distance, a quirky smile upon her parched, salty lips as she simply said she wished good fortune upon her husband fishing at sea, for the winds to be gentle, for the waters to be plentiful. Fortunately for them, their wish was granted in many more ways than one. 

When asked why she called her second child Ivy, Alcyone tightened her wrinkled knuckles around the rough fabric of her apron, and said she wished for fidelity, for unity within their family. Ivy’s name was her self-fulfilled prophecy, as the child who remained most faithful to the family and took over her father’s business when he retired. 

Clover can realise now that she knew from the start that Clover would never be enough, would never be faithful, just because he was lucky enough he could escape, and would escape every time unfortunate hardships came up. She always knew Clover would leave, like the coward he is, the lucky coward he is. 

He ran away from his family when the business was rough and his mother became ill, all because he was lucky to receive his acceptance letter to Atlas Academy. 

He ran away that day in the mines, leaving James to face the Leviathan and detonate the charges alone, all because Clover was the lucky one guaranteed to survive, and someone needed to survive. 

He ran away that night on the plane, without even looking back at Qrow, Robyn, or Tyrian, because he was a pretentious idiot who made all the wrong decisions and couldn’t even curse his Semblance for that. 

He can only curse his Semblance for surviving, for surviving each time like the lucky bastard he is, and as a result, for living with the guilt and the broken pieces of himself and for having to fix things. 

But not right now, because now everything is too dark and too loud and he has no energy to even face the light upstairs, let alone fix things.

(When asked why the twins were called Nymphea and Lily, Mrs Ebi should’ve answered the truth, that her husband chose their younger daughters’ names, but instead she said water lilies float weightlessly, and sometimes one needs to escape gravity, if only for fleeting instants, for a brief reprieve.)

* * *

There is no rope.

That’s a shame, because his father taught him so many knots with rope - to make fishing nets, to tie boats to poles, to tie sails to masts, to tie rope to rope, so many knots for so many purposes, so many knots that fishermen need not speak in words, only in knots. 

And when words are not enough, when words are too much, and Clover would rather be alone in the dark, at least he knows he can find a safe place, or at least craft a makeshift one, out of knots. 

His father was a man of many knots, and few words. But every time he spoke, it counted, and he always used to say that when one got into trouble by himself, by his own fault, he should get out of it _by himself_. 

If the sea wasn’t merciful, his father would say it was Clover’s fault for slacking with his Semblance and his control over good fortune. Unless it was Ivy’s poor mastery of the tides and still approximate skills with steering their ship, more often than not. No one could tell for sure who their father would blame when they pulled back into port, but it was always one of those two. 

(Everyone else must’ve thought Clover’s outing at sea was successful, either because of his good luck, or because his father was a seasoned fisherman, so with such good genes and such a good teacher, what could go wrong? No one would ever guess that anything ever went wrong, for either him or Ivy, especially when Clover was around.)

And to be fair, they had it coming. 

(Just like Clover had it coming when Tyrian stabbed him through the chest,) they had it coming. 

Qrow was right, Clover had it coming. 

* * *

There is darkness. But now he has rope.

Sometimes what one has been searching for was there the whole time… but it took too much energy to reach for. 

He wants to extract the rope of Kingfisher, but that implies removing the hook, the rod, the reel, dismantling the large weapon piece by piece by piece. 

And that takes a lot of energy. And a lot of time. 

But he has time now. Everything is dark, silent, uncertain, and he has time. 

Time to take apart each piece of his Kingfisher meticulously, time to meticulously take apart each piece of himself. 

Maybe he’ll put them back together at some point, reassemble them to his liking, he doesn’t know if he ever wants to, if he even has the strength. For the moment, the hard cold metal parts bite at his skin, numbing his soul, and it’s almost like he can breathe.

(He has rope now, but he’s too focused on the process of dismantling Kingfisher to notice.) 

* * *

* * *

The noise upstairs all comes from the cacophony of huntresses and huntsmen huddled over the sofas and chairs in the living room. The kids had been busy until they got to this house, fighting Grimm and moving from place to place in the wake of the destruction and to avoid detection and cameras. And they’re still busy now, while the dust has only somewhat settled following Cinder’s arrest and the heating system’s restoration, there’s still plenty of Salem’s creatures to push back. There’s still mission plans to elaborate. 

Shooting a brief, proud look to her husband, Briar Sieben drops a bread basket and a pitcher of water on the living room table and quietly leaves, closing the door behind her so their huntsman and huntress guests can have their mission planning meeting undisturbed. It’s not hard to see that since Klein Sieben first knew Weiss, when she was just a baby girl, she’s been a long way, and so have the rest of the kids, the Sieben couple’s guests. 

The briefing is even more crowded than usual. In addition to teams RWBY and JNPR, where Penny stands in for the new P, the Happy Huntresses are also gathered around the fireplace, eyes fixating the makeshift mission chalkboard - an old drawing board Klein and Briar’s kids used when they were still young, and that the parents kept for sentimental value. Regally sitting cross-legged in an armchair at the furthest corner, Winter appears to listen carefully. Qrow leans over the chair’s worn velvety arm, hands buried deep in his pockets in a way that not-so-subtly irks the Atlesian specialist, probably trying her best not to interrupt her talking sister to reprimand his poor posture.

Weiss is leading the meeting today - usually it’s Ruby, or Jaune, or one of the Happy Huntresses on the rare occasions they join the kids. May, Joanna, and Fiona had bumped into the kids on multiple occasions on Grimm-clearing sprees through the streets of Mantle, but they hadn’t rejoined more permanently so far, due to the Happy Huntresses having been busy setting up plans to free their team leader from custody. But now they all sit together in the Sieben household, and it’s only fair Weiss is moderating the discussion. 

“Cinder won’t burn down parts of town any more, but we should still run a rescue mission at the last burn site, make sure no civilians are still stuck under the debris,” she says, scanning through the room. “Unc… um, Qrow, you know where the last burning site is, right?”

“Yup,” he groans, while his younger niece elbows her partner and whispers way too loudly into her ear. 

“You can call him uncle, you know. He won’t be mad.”

“I heard that, pipsqueak,” the shapeshifter chimes in, ruffling the back of his hair. 

“Jaune, Ren, if you don’t mind joining the rescue group,” Weiss continues while discreetly rubbing her ribs where Ruby poked her. 

“Aye,” Ren calls out, while the blonde boy nods enthusiastically. 

“Any more volunteers?”

“I’ll join you,” Robyn says much to everyone’s surprise. “That should lift people’s spirits to see I’m around now, and if being happy will stop people from attracting the Grimm...”

“Thank you, Miss Hill,” the ex-heiress ducks her head politely. “Now just as the days before, we’ll need a group to lead a sortie at the breach while another team will work on re-building the wall. Volunteers for the sortie group?”

Nora, Yang, and Joanna lift their hands, while Weiss frantically writes down their names on the chalkboard. From his corner, Qrow twitches nervously, fidgeting with a loose thread from the old couch. 

“Maybe you should get a faster fighter with you, someone who can scout ahead and run and get support if you get overrun,” Weiss suggests, watching her teammates’ uncle relax in relief at the problem he sensed being addressed. “Ruby, want to join them?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the red-caped girl salutes playfully, earning an endeared scowl from the younger Schnee. 

“From what I understand,” Weiss says, “Fiona, you have some of the materials needed to rebuild the wall… in your… palm?”

A silver eyebrow quirks in confusion, but the sheep Faunus simply waves her hand, eliciting a small bubble of blue at the centre of her palm from which something emerges - a log size of her arm? Blinking merrily, she tosses the wood into the fireplace. 

“Okay, do you mind if May and Blake tag along?”

“Not at all, Miss Schnee.”

“Why didn’t you assign yourself?” Ruby mutters, staring at her partner in confusion. 

“Because some of us have to patrol the wall to report new Grimm nests, breaches, and the like,” the former heiress snaps. “And I was hoping you’d be able to join me, Winter...”

Wall patrol can be dangerous if running into both terrestrial and flying Grimm, but usually proves rather uneventful, and no one can blame Weiss for using that time to catch up with her sister when they’d parted ways in a hurry and at odds. Specialist Schnee nods curtly, and Weiss needs to use all the discipline in her not to break into a little celebratory dance. Most are well aware of the relationship between the siblings and happy for their reunion, and only a few seconds later does Weiss notice that a lone person still hasn’t been assigned a mission. 

“Penny, you went on many missions yesterday, do you want to rest today?” 

“I don’t need to rest, I’m combat ready.”

“There’s a Grimm nest a couple of miles North-East from the breach, according to the reports from the last patrol,” Weiss mumbles, flicking through her Scroll. “Young Megoliaths and Sabyrs, shouldn’t be a concern if we don’t let them grow older. But please be careful between here and the tundra, several parties are looking for you to open the Vault and we can’t let anyone find you. If you think a Seer saw you, you have to destroy it and report immediately… what’s wrong? Uncle Qrow? Something’s wrong?”

No one points out she called him uncle, instead Ruby rushes at his heels in a storm of petals as he races out of the room and up the wooden stairs, Harbinger in hand. He can feel his bad luck spiking, his hair standing on end as an icy shiver runs down his spine, as if an invisible presence was watching his back…

They’re being watched…

“Uncle Qrow?”

“Not now, Ruby...”

“So when? Why didn’t you call us the whole time we were apart? Just to let us know you were alive?”

“Couldn’t risk you answering for long enough for anyone who might be tracking my Scroll to pick up your location. But now let - ”

“ _We were worried sick!!!_ ”

“I’m sorry. By the way, Hare’s sorry too. But now...”

“...Harriet??”

Momentarily ignoring her confusion, he opens the window, the cold wind whipping at his face and buffeting the laundry hanging to dry between two narrow balconies. The laundry hanging quite uselessly now, since the snow stopped falling it started to rain, and the sheets will get wet soon if they’re not brought in. But Qrow pays no mind to all that, instead scrutinising the hanging clothes eerily oscillating in the wind, partially concealing the slightest hints of crimson, bladed tentacles twirling in mid-air…

They’re being watched.

He blinks, drawing his weapon in shotgun form. Inhales, takes in the wind direction from the way cold raindrops streak his skin. Imagines the disgusting silhouette of the Seer Grimm trying to spy on them from behind the hanging sheets, the round dome covered with filthy grey, the boneless, wriggling arms each ending in a single sharp claw. 

And he shoots. 

He exhales, barely discerning the small puff of black smoke rising through the humid air from the destroyed Grimm. Barely registering Ruby’s drawn Crescent Rose too, and sniped at the same target a fraction of a second after him - how far this kids have come can never cease to amaze him. And barely noticing Winter yelping through the other balcony, cursing him in some way or other for startling her with the gunshots. She recovers quickly however, and continues what she’d been doing before: pouring whisky bottles down the gutter, the liquid spilling down with the rain outside. 

Nausea tugs at Qrow’s stomach, his mind lurching under the sickeningly familiar smell. He finally acknowledges what made him feel so on edge - the Seer was part of it, but the stench of alcohol definitely had played its part. 

“Ruby, get back inside,” he pants at his niece still standing behind him, as she nods and runs back downstairs. “What’s that for, Ice Queen?”

“I was going to pour them down the sink, but I thought it’d be more considerate to do it outside so _you_ wouldn’t notice the smell,” she scowls. 

“... Thanks. But you know I’ve been...”

“You’ve been clean for a couple of months now? I wasn’t sure, but I had my suspicions. I’m not doing that just for you, though. Clover’s clearly depressed and alone next to the Siebens’ wine cellar.”

Depressed - still a label stuck on a condition like a band-aid, and it’s still not enough. And yet they have to make do with it.

“So you decided to throw away our hosts’ whole stash? Some of that stuff’s fancy, I’ll have you know.”

“I know,” she snaps, a sudden hardness in her tone. 

“I’m glad you’re doing it. I wouldn’t have been able to...”

“Why am I not surprised. I did it so you or the kids don’t have to.”

“And sorry for assuming you didn’t know about pricey drinks, I...”

“You know about my mother?” she shifts nervously, setting an empty bottle next to a row of its cleanly aligned twins on the balcony at her feet.

He gulps before answering, recalling alcohol has had such a destructive influence in both their lives, both their families, and he knows it’s a touchy subject. They shouldn’t dwell on that. Not for now.

“Weiss’s hair takes a lot of time to brush and braid, and she likes to chat about Atlas and her family in the meantime. She feels less lonely that way.”

“You, of all people, brush my sister’s hair?!”

“Sometimes. The kids volunteered me for the job because I was stupid enough to admit I have experience with that. I used to take care of Yang’s hair when she grew up, and I can tell you your little sister’s hair is a lot less _life-threatening_ to brush.”

“Seeing your total lack of a sense for self-preservation, I’m not surprised to see you putting yourself in _life-threatening situations_ , as you put it -”

“Hey Ice Queen, no need to yell at me for brushing my niece’s hair -”

“Putting yourself in life-threatening situations _for your family_ ,” she finishes coldly, but the sudden respect in her cerulean eyes somewhat melts the defenses around Qrow’s soul, taking him aback and wide-eyed. “Which probably has grown to include my sister by now. And a father figure like _you_ is more than Weiss or I could ever hope for, coming from our biological parents.”

“... Wow. Didn’t expect that from you. Did Cinder hit you on the head or something? Are you gonna file your application to join the family soon? After all, not only your sis, but your adoptive irondaddy is also basically one of us as of late...”

… since we started making out and it was kind of hot and I definitely like him, as in like _like_ him, Qrow interrupts himself before spilling the contents of his mind to Winter, who lets out a slight sigh. 

“Spare me the details of your love life, Qrow.”

“... you know?”

“With the way you two always stare at each other? And the way he scooped you up and carried you bridal style to his bed after you passed out in his office from over-using your Semblance?”

“I forgot you were there,” he answers sheepishly. “Sorry you had to witness that, must’ve been embarrassing, third-wheeling between the guy you hate and the father you never had.”

“James and I aren’t as close as you think. Sure, he’s been supportive throughout all my military career and more than that, but he always kept a respectful distance. It’s like there always was a solemn sadness in him since he lost half his body, and he didn’t want to bother us with his personal troubles following that. You realise I've never even seen him use his Semblance? Even that, he seems keen to hide from everyone.”

“Jimmy's never been one to brag, and his Semblance can be a little too... dangerous for public settings. He had a team attack with your mother that involved his Semblance, Weeping Tree, was it? But I heard it was banned from the Vytal Tournament because it'd have caused too much property damage and put civilians at risk.”

“I wouldn’t know, my parents barely let me watch one year of the Vytal Tournament with my mother and the General in it, and there were instances of Blitzeis and Double Barrel, but Weeping Tree never came up.”

“Was it the year where your mum and the Lagune guy wiped the floor with the other double, but then she somehow decided against fighting in the singles round, and Glynda did quick work of Lagune in the quarterfinals?”

“I didn’t realise you were so invested in the Vytal Festivals, even though you did win a couple...” she phrases reluctantly, a hint of distaste obvious at the tip of her tongue. 

“I was interested in watching the strongest huntsmen at the time, to figure out the best ways to kill them...”

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“But speaking of your General, can I ask you something?”

“Knowing your infamous disregard for politeness, you’ll do it anyway.”

He steels himself before speaking quickly, like ripping out a band-aid fast enough so it doesn’t hurt. 

“Did he order you to hand him Penny?”

“... I don’t know,” she breathes out shakily, gloved hands clutching the rain-soaked iron railing of the balcony. “I turned my Scroll off. I’m expecting he’ll order me eventually, but… I just want to stay here and spend some time with my sister, now we’ve found her. And to catch up with Klein and Briar too, they were around the manor since before I was born, you know. Clover’s feeling terrible right now and in no condition to go back to Atlas and get ordered to kidnap Penny, and I want to stay and try to help him, we’ve known each other since the Academy and that’s the least I can do. And I just don’t know… not only do I owe Penny my life, but she’s my friend, and I don’t know if I can hand her in...”

“So stay,” he says softly. 

Softly enough to surprise her, causing her to take a step back, her boot knocking over an empty glass bottle that rolls off the balcony and shatters onto the street below. 

They don’t know if staying’s the right thing to do, the good thing to do. And with no gods to judge them, only history may perhaps tell. But now they’re among family, the simple thought of leaving is unbearable, so history will have to wait.

“Stay,” he repeats more firmly, “if that’s what you think is right, who am I to judge? Who is anyone to judge? You can stay here… but wait… if you’ve been here on the balcony the whole time, who was the Winter downstairs in the living room just now about to go on patrol with Weiss?”

Swearing under his breath he’d have a talk with Robyn or whoever let a certain criminal with a knack for borrowing appearances mingle with the kids, he dashes away from the balcony. But before he can elucidate the Schneenanigans, he’s surrounded, circled, utterly defeated by the dark, warm human masses closing in until he can’t breathe…

“Group hug!” someone says somewhat belatedly, probably Jaune… Qrow can’t tell among the tufts of red, blonde, brunette hair saturating his field of vision as the kids hold him tight, never letting go. 

“We missed you so much, Uncle Qrow!” That sounds like Yang, even though Ruby and Penny are saying roughly the same thing at the same time, struggling to catch their breath amongst the embrace of taller kids.

“We were so worried you were dead!” comes the booming voice of their resident hammer wielder. 

“Or in custody following the arrest warrant,” Ren amends more reasonably. 

“Or just flirting with General Ironwood?” Nora counters.

“Or with Operative Ebi?” That could be Blake, but with the increasing overlap between their excited voices, it becomes hard to distinguish them, not that he cares, basking in the warmth of the group hug.

“Or both?”

“Yeah, what about both?”

“That sounds delightful. I am very excited for them three.”

“Why choose? They all have two hands.”

“Well, not unlike you, Yang, the General doesn’t exactly have two hands...”

“Operative Ebi isn’t in shape to be flirting with anyone right now, if not he’d be leading the mission meeting himself like he always does, instead of me, and it wouldn’t be so bittersweet and uncooperative...”

“Shouldn’t someone go check on him? Uncle Qrow, can you...”

“You think I haven’t tried?”

“I think Winter just left to see him...”

“Winter? Isn’t she being yelled at by Robyn right now?”

“Wait, how many Winters are there?”

“Like the season?”

“No, you dolt!”

“Are we counting Penny?”

“Two, and that’s the problem, kiddo. Now if you let me go, I can take care of...”

“Nope.”

“Nope, not letting go.”

“Neverrrrr!”

“What can one extra Winter even do to us, when we’re all together?”

And as much as Qrow hates to admit it, the kids do have a point.

* * *

Later, much later… Clover doesn’t know how much time has passed, how many times he’s disassembled and reassembled Kingfisher now. As if stopping would stop his lungs from breathing. As if stopping would stop his heart from beating. And his mind would break again. 

All he knows is that Specialist Schnee is watching him silently, solemnly, her arms behind her back while he finally adjusts the last parts back together. As he takes his weapon in hand, she nods politely before drawing both her swords, instantly moving into a combat stance. Reflexively, he mirrors her form, raising Kingfisher and feeling his brain mercifully switch off as battle instincts take over. 

“Wanna spar?” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything’s better with the kids!
> 
> If you wonder where I’ve been the whole time and why I’m late updating (other than real life and I’ve been sick and things like that) I spent a day getting distracted by writing and recording a fair game/lucky charms song, if you’re interested you can find it here https://youtu.be/KSbJHHNvjzs hoping it makes up for the wait… shameless plug lol ;)
> 
> Next chapter *hopefully* on Wednesday, stay safe and posted xx


	17. Knots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … uh stuff happens? And QCRWN trying to be iconic frenemies. 
> 
> Warnings: blood, mentioned injury, canon-typical violence, swearing

The boy’s eyes are full of fear, and his tears are full of ash. He could be Jaune or Ren’s age, or even younger, it’s hard to tell with the soot streaking his frightened features. Even his height is hard to estimate, from his strained position as he struggles to sit up, both his legs pinned down by a large metal support beam that fell over him when Cinder burned the city block down. Above their heads, the sorry remains of the building’s frame sway and squeak in the menacing wind. 

Qrow doesn’t dare take a step closer, his fingers trembling ever so slightly against the hilt of Harbinger as he focuses on reining in his misfortune. He doesn’t particularly want to see how much red there is among all the black under that beam, how misshapen the boy’s legs may be. He remembers his time with the tribe, the imploring eyes of helpless villagers in the towns they raided, how he’d have to shrug and move on. Robyn, however, advances toward the broken boy. 

“You’re… Robyn Hill… you’re alive.”

The blonde politician kneels before him, reaching out a hand, and the smallest of trembling flames dawns in the boy’s eyes as she answers. 

“I’m alive, and so are you. We’re Huntsmen, and we’ll get you out of here.”

Still shaking, he nods. 

“I can’t replenish his Aura if it’s not unlocked in the first place,” Jaune mutters nervously, dropping to one knee next to her while Ren stands on her other side. “And I should start working on him before you move the beam, or he might bleed out from his wounds if we remove that much pressure from his legs at once.”

“Save your Aura, I can unlock him,” she whispers back. “Cover us, Blondie. Pink Eye, Five o’clock shadow, survey the perimeter for a-”

Before any of them can react, Ren’s pink eyes blink open - and twirling around the Happy Huntress, he draws Jaune’s shield from his arm and slams it into the ground, provoking a purple shockwave that hurls an attacking pack of Sabyrs back and flying through the air. Qrow and the others hadn’t even heard the Grimm approaching. Before the creatures roughly land among the charred debris, both the shapeshifter and the green-clad boy brandish their weapons in gun form. Under their barrage of bullets, the smaller monsters dissolve into black smoke even before they hit the ground. 

“You'll have to be patient, kid,” Robyn murmurs kindly, extending her hand onto the wounded child’s shoulder. “We’ll get you out of there, but first I have to give you the force to fight back for yourself.”

Ren and Qrow’s gunfire won’t be enough to slow the larger Grimm down before they reach her and the still-vulnerable civilian, they realise as a faint sheen of light envelops Robyn and the boy. While two larger Manticores charge at them, Ren shoots out both cables from his weapons.

"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality…”

Blocking out Robyn’s low chant in the background, Qrow witnesses one of Stormflower’s blades stabbing into a monster’s ribs, hurling it toward the shapeshifter. He pounces, dancing weightlessly around the cable of Ren’s weapon while he expands Harbinger in mid-flight. By the time it fully transformed, the great scythe already cleaved the Grimm in two symmetrical halves.

“Through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death…”

The other Manticore shrieks behind the scythe-wielder’s back, Ren’s second blade impaled into its blood-red eye, and Qrow only has to bring his scythe full circle to impale the creature through the abdomen from below. With a grunt, Jaune rushes forward and beheads it with a single strike of his broadsword.

“I release your soul and by my shoulder protect thee."

The light radiates further before extinguishing, but Ren is undeterred by the blinding flash, slashing and shooting at the remaining smaller Sabyrs.

“You’ve improved, boys,” Qrow notes as he stores Harbinger behind his back. “Even since your Atlas training.”

“We’ve had a lot of chances to fight Grimm since we got to Mantle,” Ren explains as he and the shifter stand on either side of the fallen support beam on the civilian’s legs, ready to lift it as the glow of Jaune’s Semblance spreads protectively over the boy’s body. “And it’s easier to focus here… it’s quieter.”

As both huntsmen heave the beam, the howl of a Griffin echoes overhead, and Jaune knocks his blade into the nearest column, bringing down the entire remainder of the ruined house’s framework onto the creature’s back. The heavy structure hits the floor with a loud _thump_ , raising large clouds of sooty particles. Both wings broken, the Grimm squawks in pain, giving Robyn a sufficient window to shoot an explosive arrow down its beak, causing it to blow up instantly with a deafening detonation. 

“Quieter, huh?” Qrow echoes, his hands having reflexively moved to his pained eardrums.

“It’s hard to explain...” Ren trails off while Robyn and Jaune support the civilian to the nearest still-open hospital, insisting he should get his legs scanned despite the apparent healing. “There’s so many people suffering here, but their negative emotions are simple. It’s all about surviving till tomorrow. Back in Atlas… nobody may have noticed it, because of how prim and proper he behaves, but there was always such anguish radiating from the General, like he was always in turmoil because of the weight of his decisions.”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one who noticed. He has nightmares, sometimes he mumbles in his sleep.”

Ren opens his mouth. And promptly shuts it. Because of course he does, the implications of how Qrow knows this dawning into his mind. 

“But it took me a while to realise, and to figure out how to help him with it.” Qrow continues, chasing the ashes from his hair with anxious fingers. “ I don’t even know if I managed, but at least I tried. You sensed it immediately with your Aura and Semblance though - that’s very advanced, you should be proud of yourself. I knew you kids were gonna go far.”

“I’m trying,” Ren says. “For everyone and the rest of our teams. Especially Nora, because I don’t know if she’ll ever forgive me.”

“You two had your disagreements...”

Doesn’t mean they can’t try to forgive, to survive, to live, to love...

“What, are you disagreeing? What are you talking about?” Robyn cuts in, waving off the civilian before turning around to face Qrow and Ren. “We should head back before the others worry, because that’d only attract more Grimm.”

* * *

Kingfisher’s rope springs out like a whip, pushing Winter backward in the restricted space. The metal hook dances before her eyes, moving relentlessly, but she blocks it each time, meeting each strike with surgical precision. Shifting her weight on her heels, she slashes diagonally to parry, before lifting two fingers and generating a glyph from which a flock of silvery Nevermores takes flight toward her sparring partner. 

She watches in satisfaction as he has to retract his hook to twirl his weapon before his face, shielding himself from the onslaught of sharp beaks and hard claws. But her mirth is short-lived when the bladed tip of Kingfisher spins out with centrifugal force, rebounds against the ground before looping around her left hand, tangling the fishing line around her wrist - just his luck. 

He only has to tug sharply to rid her of her shorter sword. Cursing under her breath, she barely has enough time to notice when he connects her smaller blade to the end of his hook, flinging it toward her at full force across the distance separating them. Again and again, the side weapon at the end of his line collides with her larger saber, each metallic clang resonating through the humid air with increased restless intensity. Narrowing her eyes, she sidesteps his rope, deflecting the sharp tip with a small flick of her wrist. Immediately, he reels in his catch, allowing the cable of his weapon to fly past her and wrap around her waist. Before pulling back, slamming her straight into the hard brick wall. 

She smirks. She expected that. With a wave of a gloved finger, Winter produces a new glyph against the wall against which her boots land perfectly, before racing off on the vertical surface toward her opponent. When she prances down onto him, he only has time to step back and lock his hand around her sword arm to plant her sword into the floor, barely grazing the tip of his ear as she pins him down with her full weight, cutting his breath short as he winces under the pain of his chest injury.

The sight of his jaw clenched in ache makes her falter for a fraction of a second, sitting straighter to shift her mass away from his wound. But a glint of light flickers in his turquoise eyes as he seizes his chance, slamming the side of his hand into her wrist to disarm her before pressing her own saber to her neck. Less than a heartbeat later, she’s already drawn his hook still locked to her waist and held it against his Adam’s apple, ending their spar in a draw. 

They can’t remember how long they’ve been at this, their weapons clashing repeatedly. They don’t keep track of the countless times she’d won, nor of the perhaps even more countless times he’d won. They’re tired, sweaty, too wary to think anything else than the soreness in their limbs, and perhaps that’s for the best. But from the other end of the room, enthusiastic voices echo, definitively washing away anything left of their stray thoughts. 

“That was amazing!”

“You saw how fast Clover reacted?”

“And how many steps ahead Winter was planning?”

“Now that is the work of experienced huntsmen.”

“How did you guys do that?”

“Easy,” Winter scoffs, disentangling herself from Clover and dusting her clothing, a habit she collected while she was used to pristine white outfits. “I hate him.”

“... What?”

The question emerged from a chorus of collective gasps, and even the former Ace Op’s tired features betray genuine surprise… although the Specialist couldn’t tell whether he never knew, or forgot alongside everything else following his near-death experience. She holds out a hand to help him up without looking in his direction, and he accepts it gladly in the awkward silence, only interrupted when Winter’s sister manages to formulate a more articulate version of the previous query.

“I can see why you would dislike Uncle Qrow at first, due to clashing personalities and life histories… but Clover? Why would you hate him?”

“Oh, I hated him since before I met him. Nothing to do with his personality.”

“But then why?”

“Because _Father_ wanted to get me engaged with him.”

“... what?!”

After all, given his Semblance and his rank in the military, and the fact he was barely a handful of years older than Winter, at least the children could see how such an engagement might make sense.

“You dad can go shove it,” Qrow grumbles, walking in through the door with Jaune, Ren, and Robyn in the aftermath of their mission. 

“I agree,” the politician hums while distractedly examining her stock of arrows. 

“You professionals should give us a demonstration,” Ruby suggests, bouncing excitedly. “You… more experienced professionals, I mean. We’ve already seen Uncle Qrow against Winter, and Winter against Clover, but when are we going to see you two spar?”

At once, eight pairs of eyes stare alternately at the ex-Ace Op captain and the shapeshifter, the latter feeling blood drained from his face, his fingers suddenly clammy against the handle of Harbinger. He wouldn’t dare raise his weapon again on Clover, would rather let himself be taken down than strike him again, because they may have been lucky last time and no one died but they may not be lucky again if there’s a next time so there mustn’t shouldn’t _cannot_ be a next time…

“... Uncle Qrow?” Yang mutters, taking a worried step toward him while he avoids Clover’s eyes, never daring to imagine how the idea might affect him in his devastated emotional state. 

“As much as sparring sounds fun, school’s over, kids,” Robyn mercifully cuts in, shooting Qrow a small glance while knowing full well that her former team leader already seized the opportunity to retract to his lonely darkness, because being able to stand and fight doesn’t mean he’s back to being okay, and that’s okay too. “We have important matters to talk about… and dinner to make.”

“Okay, I’m hungry,” Nora shouts while Yang’s stomach grumbles in agreement.

* * *

“Will it work?” Fiona says, white brow furrowing in worry. 

“Even if it doesn’t, it won’t hurt to try,” Robyn attempts with a reassuring smile, before sitting at the dinner table facing Neo and taking the girl’s small hand into her own.

As a faint sheen of shimmering Aura coats the politician and the criminal’s forearms, the remainder of the Happy Huntresses hold their crossbows loaded, ready to shoot should Neo attempt anything out of line. Not far behind them, Qrow also has Harbinger drawn in shotgun form, while the kids sit grimly across the sofas in the living room, in an arrangement that’d become the new normal as of late.

“Was the Relic successfully destroyed?” the blonde huntress asks, eyes intently watching how the smaller woman will choose to respond. 

And she responds.

… With a shrug. 

At least, that they all can understand. They can all understand that they understand nothing, that all is uncertain. Robyn lets out a deep sigh, and her glowering hand turns green. 

“Was the last question used?” Qrow intervenes. “Did you see Jinn?”

Cocking her head, Neo conjures a rain of glittering particles around her body, superposing a transient hologram of the blue genie around her own silhouette. 

“So you’ve seen her,” the scythe-wielder grumbles. “And from what I’ve heard, she wouldn’t just show herself to you and not answer any questions.” 

“So after she heard the answer,” Robyn continues, “how did Cinder destroy the lamp?”

Neo gestures to her eyes, briefly projecting flames around them to simulate Maiden powers, before the blazing shapes dissolve into pale pink shards.

“And does Salem know Cinder and you at least tried to destroy the lamp?”

She shakes her head. Robyn’s Aura coating their hands still gleams green. 

“So, we’re in the dark, Salem’s in the dark, and nobody knows if this whole war even makes any sense any more,” the Happy Huntress leader summarises.

“The General has the lamp, his experts might be able to figure it out...” Winter cuts in from the doorsill, where she was deep in conversation with Klein.

“The last question was used up though, so it’s not supposed to be active in any kind of way until the next century,” Qrow says.

“But then why is _she_ still here with us?” Yang calls out, blinking in Neo’s direction as if fighting back her eyes turning from violet red. “What does she want?”

The criminal stares down at her boots for a few seconds, shoulders seemingly trembling as she turns into Ruby. But the illusion shatters as soon as it forms, replaced by a small shape in her hand… a cookie? Is that really what she wants? But that vanishes too, and frantically she starts signing with her hands, wringing free of Robyn’s grasp as the Happy Huntresses flinch and aim their weapons. 

“I want to survive,” Penny translates evenly to a dumbfounded audience.

A dumbfounded audience who, even in the absence of Robyn’s Semblance confirming the signing, can’t help but believe the simple words, the simple plea. 

“It must be hard surviving without cookies!” Nora exclaims in understanding. “Or pancakes. Or anything to eat. Speaking from experience.”

“Lie, cheat, steal, and survive,” Ruby murmurs nervously.

“What?” her sister asks.

“Nothing… Penny, you know sign language?”

“My data-base is in-built with dictionaries four different sign languages, seven spoken and written languages, one hundred twenty-seven dialects, Braille, Morse, and - ”

“Got it, kid,” Robyn interrupts with a wave of her hand. “But the question remains what to do with Neo. If you want to survive amongst us, with everything that’s going on outside right now, you’ll have to help. I’ve seen you fight, I know you can fight at least as well as any huntress. But seeing how the kids are glaring at you, I’m wondering who’ll let you help. Who would be okay going on a mission with Neo?”

The former council candidate raises her hand, immediately followed by the ragtag ensemble of Happy Huntresses, and a beat later, Winter and Qrow. 

“I cannot wait to make a new friend!” Penny announces, her gloved hand shooting high toward the ceiling.

At the same time as Blake’s hand. 

While Yang and Ruby cast a dark, uncomprehending glare in her direction. 

“I want to give her a chance,” the feline Faunus stammers, turning to her team, “like you gave me a chance. Even when you knew of my past, of my work with the White Fang and their terrorist actions, you gave me a chance to fight alongside you. I may never really redeem myself, because I may have crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed… but at least you gave me a chance to try. And I’m grateful. And I want to do the same, to her. She was manipulated by people like Roman, like Cinder… but maybe she deserves better.”

“Does she?” Yang snarls. “She tried to kill me when I was knocked out. Tells you something about her morals, about what she deserves. And now she’s hellbent on killing Ruby, and I. Won’t. Let. Her.”

“People change,” Blake retorts. “I changed when I met you.”

“But… you were different,” Weiss points out, “when you left the White Fang and came to Beacon you were already actively trying to change for the better.”

“Actively? Like the Grimm are actively destructive, and the sky is actively blue?”

“Your intention was already to redeem yourself, but we don’t know what she actively wants. By the time we figured out about your past, we’d already fought alongside you, and we knew you could be trusted not to backstab us.”

“Neo actively saved my life against Cinder,” Winter intervenes. 

“Besides, how do we know whether she can be trusted, if we don’t give her a chance?” the brunette adds. 

“You go ahead and give her a chance...” the younger Schnee hesitates, “I’ll just give it time. And if she proves herself to be trustworthy in the first few missions… then maybe I’ll trust her? Is that okay?”

 _...Or am I a coward?_ The silent question lingers in the tense air. 

“It’s all right,” Qrow answers. “That it takes more time to trust others when you or your loved ones have been betrayed or mistreated throughout your life. Fortunately, the rest of us are here to help out.”

“Thank you, Uncle Qrow.”

“That’s all very touching,” Winter cuts in, “but it still doesn’t solve the problem of what to do next. If it still even makes sense to save Atlas, since we don’t know for sure what happened to the Relic.”

“As long as the whale is still overhead, we still have Atlas and Mantle to save,” Ruby answers. “That thing drips new puddles every day, and Grimm spawn from them. As long as Mantle and Atlas aren’t safe from the Grimm, our job here isn’t done.”

“Grimm activity has decreased since Cinder was arrested and heating was switched back on,” Ren reports. “But Grimm around this house have only grown more and more numerous in the past few days.”

“Negative emotions are attracting the Grimm,” May judges, leaning onto her weapon from her standing position.

“How Clover is feeling right now certainly doesn’t help,” Robyn clarifies darkly as a shadow flies past her purple glare. 

“Ren, do you think you could shield the whole house from the Grimm with your Semblance,” Jaune suggests. “I know it would be draining on your Aura, but I can help you with that.”

“You have an Aura amplification Semblance? Neat!” Joanna comments as her blue-haired teammate nudges her gently.

“I suppose I could. Reduced Grimm activity around Mantle means some of us could dedicate more time to keeping the house safe and to training.”

“And that would ensure Klein and Briar are safe in here,” Weiss adds.

“Is everyone okay with that? As long as that can help Clover and all of us, I’m okay with it,” Robyn says.

Everyone nods more or less hesitantly, until Qrow clears his throat, causing the audience to instantly turn toward him. 

“The thing is, it won’t help Clover. I’ve experienced Ren’s Semblance first hand when I was poisoned. The tranquility numbs emotions… It’s certainly useful in a fight, but in the long run?”

He blinks, and he remembers the last time he felt that numb, after Ren had shielded them all from the Nuckelavee. He remembers Brunswick farm, dead red eyes still imprinted onto the darkness beneath his eyelids, boneless long limbs rocking him to sleep, slow, lulling...

“Then I agree,” Winter speaks, moving to stand by his side as the small crowd listens to each of her footsteps. “If it cuts Clover from his emotions, he won’t be able to come to terms with them, and get better. If we must dedicate resources to defending the house, we should dedicate them to fighting Grimm rather than hiding from our problems.”

Her stance is hardly a surprise given the history of drowning one's emotions in alcohol in her family, but what's shocking is that she'd go as far as publicly approve of Qrow's argument. Desperate times, desperate measures, no doubt.

“Is there a way we could mask negative emotions with something else? Like strong positive emotions to repel the Grimm?” Ruby ventures. “Mum used to say that baking brought happiness, and that helped keep away the Grimm...”

“Yeah, everything was a good reason to bake for Summer,” Qrow remembers, carefully tasting the sound of her name rolling off his tongue...

“That could work,” Fiona replies, “we’ve also heard about that at the Academy. Should we… celebrate then?”

“As if there were anything worth celebrating,” Weiss sneers, crossing her arms.

“Is there a birthday coming soon? Or a wedding?” Yang suggests, leaning forward from her seat.

“No one here was planning to get married,” Ren replies calmly.

“But now you mention it, maybe you and Nora should tie the knot?” the blonde springs to her feet in excitement.

“But… isn’t it a bit out of nowhere? We’re not even engaged...” the hammer-wielder shrieks, bewildered.

“So you could have an engagement party?”

“But we haven’t been together _together_ for that long? Maybe a month?” Ren lifts both hands into the air.

“What are you two talking about?” Jaune rubs his hair in confusion. “You’ve been together since forever.”

“Weren’t you already dating after Kuroyuri?” Ruby prompts in genuine interest.

“We were together - ” Ren starts.

“- but not together _together_ … And even after we got to Atlas, we still weren’t together _together together_...” Nora trails off.

“Our relationship hasn’t always sailed smoothly,” her dark-haired partner finishes tentatively.

“And even after you’ll be married, it still won’t be perfect?” the shapeshifter shrugs artfully, fidgeting with his jewellery.

“And you should not expect it to become perfect. But a celebration would not be unwelcome,” Winter speaks out, hands at her hips. “For the greater good.”

“Woah, you’re agreeing with me again?” Qrow’s eyes fly open wide. “You’re sure you’re not being impersonated again, Ice Queen?”

She scowls wordlessly at him, and that’s infinitely reassuring.

“Nora… can I have a second? I-” Ren tries.

“Ren, we don’t have a second,” she interrupts increasingly agitatedly. “I have something to say first. In fact I have something to confess.”

“Are you transgender?” Penny asks, tilting her head slightly.

“He already knows that part,” Nora answers, and the rest of the kids already know too, while the Happy Huntresses, Qrow, and Winter aren’t overly affected by the news. “I just wanted to say I didn’t love you from the day you saved me, back in Kuroyuri. I didn’t love you even at the Beacon dance yet… but it kind of grew on me, you know? So my feelings may not be that old, but I hope it’ll be okay, because we’ve been through so much together, we’ve been through thick and thin together together, we’ve travelled through a continent on foot to save the world, we’ve fought monsters and criminals, and it was so hot when you beheaded the Nuckelavee, and...”

“Nora, you’re babbling,” her boyfriend says, blushing furiously.

“Yeah I know but… I… Ren, will you marry me?”

“Nora, will you marry me?” he speaks nearly at the same time, only losing a fraction of a second to get to one knee.

Qrow isn’t sure he hears her answer - some muffled “boop?” uncharacteristically quiet for such a usually loud person - through the other kid’s loud cheers and Ruby’s pained yelp as Yang fist-bumps her with her metal arm. 

“High five, Ice Queen?” the shifter holds out his hand, just to see the priceless expression on Winter’s face as she reluctantly, oh-so-reluctantly accepts it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to ColdRingOfWhiteSteel for suggesting the combination between Robyn’s Semblance and Neo’s… own ways to communicate. I hadn’t thought of that until you mentioned it, so thank you :3
> 
> We’ll check up on Jimmy next chapter! And then the Renora engagement party ;)
> 
> Trans Nora has always been my headcanon and you won't change my mind, I've even seen another fic agreeing with it, so there's that.
> 
> I know I’ve messed up my updating Wednesday-Saturday updating schedule. I was just busy with real life, and then an old AU idea hit me in the face again so I was working on that. Something with Qrow/James/Clover because I love these boys, OT3 rights, and they need a hug. I’ll keep you posted when that comes online, if it ever does in the near future. And I’ll keep you posted on the update schedule too… till then, stay healthy xx


	18. Freefall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nope, not commenting on that title. Nope, shit’s definitely not going down. 
> 
> Warnings: mention of alcoholism, kicked puppy, Whitley Schnee being a rapscallion from hell who probably deserves his own warning

“James, weren’t you and Arthur dancing around each other the whole time back then?” Willow chuckles, taking a tiny sip of her boiling hot tea. 

The General, drawn from his dark thoughts, allows himself a small smile at that, wrapping his soft dressing gown tighter around his shoulders before reclining back into his armchair. At his side, Whitley, who’s been following his mother everywhere as tightly as her shadow, seems absorbed by something on his Scroll. Willow nudges him sharply and reprimands him with her most stern look. Which is still not devoid of wary warmth.

“What was going on between Arthur and I was merely the start of a purely professional partnership that would go on to shape the future of Atlas, from the design of our safety systems to heating and artificial atmosphere,” the General answers, stirring his tea with a steel spoon in his metal hand. “Arthur and I came from not much but had big plans back then, and at that we were kindred spirits of sorts. You and Lazlo, on the other hand, were already wealthy and famous when you joined the Academy, so everyone, myself included, was always wondering if you two were going to be an item or just really good friends.”

Willow flicks through the pages of the photo album Ironwood had left on the table for his guests, overfull with photos of team WILW on missions, at balls and parties, at ceremonies and graduation. Ironwood had stumbled upon the old book within his too large, too dusty cupboards when looking for photos that could help with Clover’s memory, and insisted to share it with his former team leader and her only child left. Willow had in fact invited him to come for tea at the Schnee Manor now that she’s in charge, but due to his still ailing health after recently recovering from poisoning, he had to decline, instead offering to welcome them in the comfort of his own quarters.

“I don’t know either,” she speaks softly, delicate fingers caressing a picture of herself and Lazlo Lagune at some opulent masquerade ball, both dressed in their finest formal attire. “It’s not like I’ve ever had a healthy romantic relationship to compare.”

They were smiling in that image. They were young still, happy still back then.

“Looking back, I was more in love with the idea of him than with Laz himself,” she muses. “The son of a famous general, comfortable with his celebrity status, confident on the battlefield, charming, carefree… everything my fiancé was not.”

“That Lazlo Lagune doesn’t look all  _ that  _ attractive,” Whitley frowns, peering over the photograph before turning through the pages to find an image of the team at a pool party in their old-fashioned swimsuits, appearing rather ridiculously demure to current standards.

In the picture, James sips from a colourful cocktail with a slice of orange on the side, while Willow clutches her large straw hat decorated with blue flowers matching her eyes, and Lazlo pushes back his heart-shaped sunglasses onto his sunny strands of golden hair. Lazlo and Willow hang onto a pink unicorn-themed buoy complete with rainbow sprinkles, while Arthur must have been snickering in the corner about how they would never get off their high horse, judging by the heartfelt laughter gracing all their faces in response. 

Back then, they were still happy. Still young.

“Lazlo’s last name was half the battle, Whitley. All the ladies were falling for him back in the day, and all the gentlemen too,” James recalls, “so your mother wasn’t the only one. He was everyone’s knight in shining armour, but I suppose he was especially your mother’s.”

Whitley is nearly the age his mother and her team had been in the picture, and the General wonders how the Schnee heir never experienced the seductive success of a young Laslo Lagune or Willow Schnee, with the fortune attached to his name. In addition, Whitley’s definitely not unattractive for his age, and seeing how his sisters blossomed he would likely grow into a handsome adult. But judging by the boy’s diaphanous porcelain complexion, he probably hadn’t been outside that much to meet and be courted by crowds of fellow upperclassmen. Yet another downfall of Jacques’s upbringing, grooming his son to become but a carbon copy of himself...

“At least Lazlo almost liked me back,” Willow recalls, “and because he really knew me, not just because of my family name. Even though the family name did play a role, don’t get me wrong. The celebrity gossip around whatever relationship we had back at the Academy was definitely appealing to him.”

“Lazlo respected you for being a good team leader, and a good huntress. Just as all of us do.”

“Thanks, James. I guess I’ve forgotten what it felt… to be respected.”

Hearing that hurts. It hurts, saying out loud must hurt even more. But she continues, as if unperturbed:

“You know, we had our dreams too. I had that dream that Laz and I would elope, away from Jacques and my family and his family, to carve a path of our own as huntsmen, as heroes, as knights in shining armour for everyone. It was a pipe dream that led nowhere. At least you and Arthur were capable of great things before you parted ways.”

“We were, but over the years, Arthur’s plans grew a delusion of grandeur and moved further and further from our initial goal, to keep Atlas peaceful and safe from the Grimm and Salem. When he exposed his idea to… enhance humankind by means that were risky and less than ethical. I thought that was crossing a line I wasn’t willing to cross… but now I’m not so sure.”

“Don’t think I could help,” she regrets. “I haven’t been sure of much lately.”

Whitley snorts softly, shooing away Zwei who comes to munch on his shoelace. His mother bends down to pick the dog up, placing him on her lap as his minuscule paws can’t do much in protest, just shed abundant grey and white hair on her pristine navy skirt.

“I guess what… happened to Lazlo was part of what caused Arthur’s change of mind. In fact, what happened to Laz affected each of us in different ways.”

She looks lost… she’s been lost since it happened, since everything that happened. But at least, with the puppy on her lap, with her eyes staring vaguely in the distance, she looks relaxed, as if accepting her own downfall, as if she’s stopped struggling to break her freefall.

“But how is he?” Willow asks.

“Mother, did you forget again? Lazlo Lagune died ten years ago. To the same respiratory illness that took Grandpa Nick’s life. Guess it’s not that much use being a huntsman, if you can’t defend even yourself with those fancy weapons and end up dying in ways just as lame as everybody else.”

Correction - the reason why Whitley’s not being courted by everyone his age in Atlas right now is definitely the fact that every word out of his mouth is vitriol, taking pride in offense, coated with contempt even for his own grandfather, devoid of any respect for anyone, for anything.

“I meant, Arthur,” his mother amends timidly. “You’ve seen him recently, James, how is he?”

“Alive.”

Last time James had gone down to the Atlesian prisons, it hadn’t been to see Arthur, but Cinder. It’d been pitiful, with the General all but breaking out of hospital without medical clearance and barely being able to stand, and the fallen Maiden taunting him with her every word, giving him nothing but more uncertainty, more torments. 

_ “Look at you, already half-monster, already ripped off of half your body, and yet still coming back for more. You might think highly of yourself, General, but chess pieces come in pairs, and you and I are more similar than you’d like to admit.” _

_ “You say we’re not so different,” James says, “but why does it matter? What matters is that you’re in this cell now, and we’ve defeated you, and you won’t be hurting anyone any more.” _

_ “So why don’t you find some puppet of yours and stuff my power into her?” _

_ “You won’t trick me py trying to provoke me, Cinder. Tell me what you did with the Relic.” _

_ “You tell me. You have labs full of scientists who can tell you if it worked, no doubt all your lab rats are studying the cracked lamp right now. I tried to destroy it, but I don’t know if it worked. Why must you come here and ask me?” _

_ “In case there were even a small probability you’d be able to tell me.” _

_ “You know what I can tell you? You’re not transferring my power because you’re out of puppets. Because your puppets cut off their strings. And now you’re alone, all your allies are either dead or traitors to your cause. You’re willing to sacrifice everything because you know no one will care if you’re hurt, no one will care if you die, or if you lose yourself.” _

“Alive… and well, still?” Willow presses further, the perfect picture of poise and grace as she obliviously caresses Zwei’s soft hair. 

“He’s the same as ever,” James speaks hesitantly, still distracted by his haunting memories. “Always ready to serve whomever appreciates his talent and gives him something in return, be it us or Salem. I could’ve killed him right there and then, and I didn’t, because of the past we shared as teammates. And maybe I did the right thing, he did help design our new agricultural facility. But then he escaped at the same time as Robyn Hill, and I don’t know what he’s up to, and if there’s the slightest chance he might -”

“He’d have done the same thing for you, James,” Willow interrupts. 

“What?”

“Arthur would’ve let you live if he had your life between his hands. In honour of our shared memories.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Not everyone lives in the past, Willow.”

History has left her by the wayside, drowning at the bottom of some bottle of whiskey while the currents continue to hurl the rest of them forward, and they have to push on, to keep on fighting. But maybe she’s content where she is, reminiscing the past now she’s finally got no one left in the present - her husband in custody, her daughters disappeared, her only son treating her like a drunk less-than-nothing...

_ “It’s lonely at the top, Cinder, I’m sure both you and I can relate. But you’re wrong, my men have remained loyal to our cause -” _

_ “Loyal to Atlas, to the chain of command, perhaps… but loyal to you? Ozpin and Leo are dead, but where are Winter and Qrow when you need them most? Where’s your little android maiden and her inventor father? Where are your trusted friends stopping you from stumbling out of hospital to come see me when you can hardly even stand on your feet? Where are your loved ones taking care of you, telling you you need to take care of yourself? I might die in a cell, but it’s worth it as long as there’s a probability I’ll die as a goddess, and I’ll be remembered for what I did, for destroying a relic, ending a war, preventing the Brothers’ return. But you? You think history will forgive you because you’ll write it, but you’re losing your mind, no one will believe you. You’ll die alone, abandoned and despised by all those you ever cared for, all those you ever loved.” _

“That’s a shame,” Willow comments simply, turning back to the album while Zwei wriggles on her knees. 

James wonders if she cares. Or if she just asks to be polite - after all, she’s been taught to be polite, poised, picture perfect in public from the youngest age. She looks like someone who’s past caring, like the captain who’s last to abandon ship among the storm because it’s too late to save herself now, and why bother abandoning ship?

Willow doesn’t truly care. Lazlo died. Arthur betrayed them all, and no one knows where he’s gone now. Qrow said he’d come back, and he didn’t, preferring siding with the kids over James, preferring staying with Clover over the General. Clover, James had already lost that fateful night, because he trusted James with his everything and James betrayed his everything with his orders. 

Cinder’s right. James is alone. There’s no one to break his freefall now.

“I’m not feeling too well,” Whitley’s mother bemoans, her ivory fingers clutching her liver where the corgi was gnawing on her expensive waistcoat. 

“I would walk you to the bathroom, but I’m not in optimal form myself,” the General says.

“I know where the bathroom is. Thank you.”

“That is embarrassing,” her son comments icily as the dog falls off her lap when she precipitantly stands and stumbles away.

“Master Whitley, I am truly sorry,” Ironwood speaks solemnly.

“Sorry?” he scoffs, tapping his fingernails against the velvet of the couch. “I’ve heard that a lot, especially in the last days.”

“Not about what happened,” James clarifies, “but about what’s to come.”

The world is lurching before Willow’s eyes. Under her feet. Within the palms of her sweaty hands. Not that it’s unusual. But this time it’s different… The white bathroom is spinning around her and even the cold hard white sink is burning and fuzzy under her fingers. The contents of her stomach goes down the drain… but it’s too late now. 

On the edge of the sink are traces of pallid yellow. Almost translucent yellow. She’s seen this shade before, there was a pouch of that liquid over her father’s bed when he was in hospital until his last breath, to keep his Aura down while they tried surgery on him, tried everything they could to save him, but couldn’t save him. There was a pouch of yellow over Lazlo’s bed, when they tried to save him. But couldn’t. There must have been the same over James’s bed, when they tried to save him. 

She tries to activate her Aura, to no avail. Why would the General have drugged her? Why would Ironwood, the most powerful man in Atlas, do that? What is she even worth, to someone like him? She’s worth nothing. Her children are worth something… but she’s worth nothing. And when four shadows tower over her, ready to subdue her, she doesn’t even put up a fight.

“I merely temporarily incapacitated your mother by adding Aura suppressants into her tea,” James explains to Whitley neutrally in the living room. “The effects should wear off within a day. I’ve sent the Ace Ops to collect her, they’ll do her no harm if she cooperates. Which will leave us the time to do what we have to do.”

“What… do we have to do? General… Ironwood?” the teenager stutters, suddenly scared in the absence of his mother. 

James remembers the first time he met Oscar, how terrified the farm boy was. That kid was the same age as Whitley. And that didn’t stop him from shooting Oscar. So, why would it stop James to use Whitley now, to serve his cause, for the greater good?

Qrow was right. Ironwood needs to be a leader for times of war now. And if there is even the slightest of chances, the most infinitesimal probability that using Whitley for his plan will work, will end the war, will force the kids to surrender Penny and give James access to the Staff so he can drop Atlas on the whale and defeat Salem’s army, it’s worth trying. 

It’s worth sacrificing Whitley. It’s worth sacrificing an innocent child, putting his life on the line if it means winning the war. It’s worth sacrificing James, his humanity, or whatever is left of it in the first place. 

After all, James’s humanity died with him when he shot Oscar down that shaft. 

Or maybe when James issued an arrest warrant on Qrow and the kids, which led to Clover’s near death, to the trauma the former Ace Op may never recover from. 

Or maybe all the way back then, back in the mine, when he told Clover to run so he’d survive, so he wouldn’t be broken, so James could break instead. 

Back then, Ironwood’s downfall had begun already. 

And what a long, beautiful fall it’d been. There’d been reprieves and mirages. So much that he thought trust, he thought love may redeem him, save him. 

But they didn’t. Trust wasn’t enough to save Clover, forever broken just as James wanted to avoid at all costs. Love wasn’t enough to keep Qrow, who still wouldn’t hand the General the Winter Maiden despite their reciprocated feelings. 

Now James can only be like Willow: embrace his freefall. And enjoy the view. With no one to stop him, nothing to stop him. 

From his Scroll, he locks down all of his quarters. He needs to make sure his precious child hostage doesn’t escape. Then, with a flick of a few virtual keys on the device, he sets up his Scroll camera to film the address he’s about to broadcast to all screens in Mantle. And for good measure, he exchanges his warm dressing gown for his uniform coat, as he should still need to look respectable and feared for his plan to work. 

“Atlas, Mantle, Weiss Schnee,” the General takes a long, ragged breath, “Special Operative Winter Schnee. I come to you with a bargain. A life for a life.”

Zwei is cowering at Whitley’s feet, but the kid brutally kicks him away with a desolate sneer. The headmaster makes a mental note to comfort the pup later, but only when they’re offscreen. This child was a lost cause anyway. The only regret James has is for Willow, after having lost her parents, her teammate… after her husband’s imprisonment… her daughter’s betrayal and disappearance… 

Now she may lose her son too.

But it’s for the greater good. To regain control on the Maiden and the Staff of Creation. For Atlas. For Remnant.

James won’t sugarcoat his message. What is it worth now? It won’t slow his freefall. He and Whitley are a few feet away from his Scroll recording the announcement. And the headmaster remains stoic, well past caring that the public will see him as an irredeemable tyrant who thinks a child’s life is a small price to pay to get what he wants, as he resumes his message. 

“I give you one day to hand me the Winter Maiden in exchange for your brother’s life. If she is returned to me, healthy and functional with her powers active, Whitley Schnee will be allowed to leave freely. If not...”

He doesn’t even need to finish the sentence. Only to point Due Process at the defenseless boy, as if ready to shoot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James: I’ll shoot another defenseless teenage boy if that means I have even the smallest chance of saving Atlas. Totally worth it.  
> Also James: Ohh nooo he kicked the puppy!!!! I must pet it and comfort it!!!
> 
> It only just occurred to me that Penny is a maiden who’s made of metal, presumably steel which is mostly iron and a tiny bit of carbon (and other things). So Penny is an Iron Maiden! I’m probably late to the party. I know, I know. 
> 
> Soon I will update the update schedule. Much meta. Such wow. Stay safe and posted xx


	19. Concern and Celebration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter wouldn't right itself aaaarrrrghhhhh  
> Warning: swearing

“1.7 klicks northwest,” Yang announces while peering down her binoculars, constantly trepidating as her boots tap the stone floor beneath them. “A new nest, spawning Megoliaths. About a dozen, right now.”

Qrow leans over to grab the binoculars from her hand, before staring and adding:

“And an Alpha. A young Alpha, but you’ve seen the markings on that one’s skull? It’s destined to lead the herd.”

“Well-received, Uncle Qrow,” Penny chirps from the other side of their comms. “The nest has been added to the mission board.”

“Very good. Currently returning to the west watchtower. See you there in ten.”

“I will plan for ten possible -”

“In ten _minutes_ , kiddo. Qrow out.”

He still can’t get used to Penny, of all people, calling him uncle. The kids have all been at it since they rejoined. They’ve been terrified they might have lost him, but he returned, choosing them over everything, and that makes them family, and that makes sense. 

In fact, he still can’t get used to… everything. To the new normal, as Clover would put it, and that brings a pang of pain to his heart. Fighting through the streets of Mantle alongside Robyn and her huntresses, including a certain ice cream cookie monster only too gleeful to slay Grimm. Assisting Jaune, Ren and the rest of the kids heal injured civilians and take them to safety, being respected and thanked as huntsmen, which reminds Qrow why they chose that job in the first place. Helping Briar and Klein in the kitchen, watching Ren make dinner and focusing on not breaking and burning everything down with his Semblance. Chatting semi-cordially with Winter on the balcony between missions, patching each other’s wounds up while her standard death glare never leaves her stern features. Mentioning Clover in conversation, only to get pushed back by the man, who likely needs more time, hopefully only needs more time… And now, patrolling the Mantle wall with his older niece, constantly humming with excitement at the celebration to come. 

“Looking forward to the engagement party, firecracker?” he teases gruffly, catching up with her as she trots and hops down the path atop the wall. 

“Just something to spice up a normal day, y’know?”

“If this normal lasts for any longer and you kiddos keep wanting to spice it up, everyone will be happily married by the time we leave this place,” he deadpans, alert red eyes still scanning their surroundings.

“From the looks of it, Robyn and Fiona may be next. I thought they were dating, but then Robyn has been messing around with Winter lately.”

“People can be attracted to different people at the same time.”

“Speaking from first-hand experience, huh?” She winks at him, and he doesn’t even know if it’s supposed to be a hand pun - if so then it’s rather hilariously terrible. 

“So you and Blake could have a joint engagement party with those three,” he jokes back.

“Yeah, why not have the birds be joined by the bees for a party?”

Qrow sighs deeply before shrugging, burying his hands deeper into his pockets.

“That would save us time. And double the amount of cake on the same day.” 

“You sound like we won’t spend that much time in this place...”

“Well… how long were you kids planning to stay anyway? Until the whale drops out of the sky?”

Not that Qrow minds staying, getting used to this new normal. They need time for their wounds to heal, and not only Clover’s chest wound, and not only their physical wounds, time to find meagre closure where it can still be salvaged. 

“That, too.”

“... That _too_?”

“Guess we’ll have to mention the elephant in the room at some point.”

“If I’m not wrong, we just reported the Alpha Megoliath and the rest of her herd to your Iron Maiden friend,” Qrow quips back.

Yang chuckles briefly, no doubt reminded where she got her sense of humour from in the first place.

“I’m talking about Oscar, Uncle Qrow. He’s gone missing, haven’t you noticed?”

“ _Oh_.”

Now doesn’t seem like a good time to point out James shot the boy down the Vault...

“Ruby wants to stay here until we find him, or he finds us. ”

“And what do you think?”

“We can’t afford to disagree in these trying times. I support Ruby no matter what, and she’s right to think that no one should be left behind. But I don’t know to what extent Ruby realises how slim our chances are, how much slimmer they get every day. Penny has been scouting all around Mantle, even the abandoned mines west of here, and...”

“She found nothing?”

“How do you know?”

“If she did find him, he’d be here with us, right?”

“Only if he’s…”

“He is.”

The saunter in Yang’s step only grows as a mixture of shock, relief, glee saturates her violet eyes.

“He’s alive and well?!”

“Oh yeah, he is.”

“How do you… where is he...”

She stops dead when the touch of his pale finger ghosts over her shoulder. The silence is too tense, too loud, and when he finally dares to break it, his words come out as a hoarse, warning whisper into her ear.

“If I want him to stay alive and well, I’ve promised I wouldn’t say a thing, and we’re never too sure who can eavesdrop on us... Besides, firecracker, you’d freak out if you knew...”

Even as he murmurs, his eyes vigilantly trace the line of the wall separating beaten down city on one side and frozen tundra on the other. And following his gaze with her binoculars - Yang sees it too. On the edge of the wall, a flutter of jet-black wings. A stare from recognisable blood-red eyes, before the bird takes flight. 

Yang’s eyes turn the same shade of crimson. It takes her a deep, ragged breath to restore them to their usual lilac, and when she’s recovered her composure, there’s no need to say anything more. 

They both know.

* * *

“I don’t have a digestive tract capable of accommodating human food, but my friends assured me that these cookies are delightful, Uncle Qrow!” Penny smiles warmly amidst the agitated party as Ruby already drags her arm into the next dance at the sound of Briar’s merry accordeon, “Why won’t you have any?”

“Raisins,” he scowls, and his brow furrowed in pure disgust says it all. 

Oblivious of the fundamental conflict of opinions, Ren and Nora’s fingers are always intertwined, their noses always brushing in persistent booping and scrunched up with laughter while the other teenagers cheer loudly around them.

“But why would you bake cookies with raisins in them if you despise this form of sustenance?” she continues, her metal eyelids clicking rapidly as she blinks in confusion.

“Not for me,” he sighs, unwilling to formulate an explanation...

“You almost burnt down my kitchen twice, almost made the oven explode three times, spilled flour everywhere, and now you tell me these cookies aren’t even for you?”

Qrow swivels around to spot the source of the older voice who just commented. Far from the dancing of kids, lulling in her rocking chair sits Klein Sieben. After a lifetime in the background as a butler, he’s usually so discreet his huntsman guests nearly forget he’s there. 

“For him, then? You like him a lot, don’t you?” he peers at the shapeshifter with warm chocolate eyes. 

His huntsman guests forget he’s there, save for the Schneesters whom he’s known since they were infants. With a polite nod, Weiss disentangles herself from Penny’s arm and announces she’ll take some of the pastries for Clover and picks up one of the loaded cookie trays with a spinning glyph, allowing her to elegantly waltz through the dancing crowd without knocking any of the delicacies over. 

“Besides, raisins are rather tasty,” the balding man shrugs, nibbling on a cookie and appreciating the crunchy texture balancing the raisins’ softness. “Achoo! The crumbs are getting everywhere though.”

“What is it with you Atlesians and raisins?” Qrow rolls his eyes, sighing heavily.

“But you do like him?”

“Is it that obvious?” 

The huntsman exhales, leaning against the wall next to Klein while shooting a grateful glance at the younger Schnee. 

“I’m used to looking for subtle details in people’s behaviour to better serve them,” the former butler shrugs, “and Atlesian upperclassmen are usually a lot more subtle than either of you two are. For an Atlesian to lose their composure as much as your friend Huntsman Ebi did, though, it must have taken a lot.”

“He was almost killed.”

The conversation couldn’t be more out of place. The kids are prancing in circles, hand in hand, around the happily engaged couple, foreheads touching while covered in an inordinate amount of shiny ribbons and garish balloons and… fresh flowers? 

“Of course, we’re at war now, what did I expect?” Klein sneers in a distinctly raspier tone, blood-red eyes almost threatening. “Judging by all the bandages, his broken heart looks more literal than most...”

There is still this sense of tension in the air, that sense that all the bouncing balloons won’t bounce around forever, and yet the kids must seize their chance, have their fun, get the time to be kids whenever they still can. 

“And yet here I am, trying to get to his heart through his stomach…”

“...while he’s not even the only one you’re interested in?”

“Just how perceptive are you,” the scythe wielder groans, fidgeting nervously with a loose thread of his cape.

“Atlesian or not, you can break a man’s heart even through his stomach, you know?” 

Klein’s eyes are turning gold, and his voice is as smooth as honey, yet Qrow can’t shake off the feeling of distinct lack of privacy clinging to his churning guilt.

“ _How do you know?_ ”

“Winter mentioned something like that when we were cleaning after your mess in the kitchen.”

“Sorry about that, I had a mission to go to...” Qrow stares down sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about that, worrying won’t help you much.”

“But he was almost _killed._ With my own weapon, and I was there, and I couldn’t stop the one who stabbed him, and… now he blames himself, I suppose. For everything that happened. Not that he’d tell me.”

“Clearly you would know, I’m sure you can relate to that kind of sentiment.”

“How’d you guess,” the shifter deadpans. “Are you gonna say I’m a lot less subtle than -”

“Achoo!” Klein sneezes again, pale green eyes blinking rapidly. “Sorry, pollen allergy.”

“At this time of year? What’s with the fresh flowers?”

The kids are twirling faster and faster around the room, spinning garlands of fresh blossoms from which petals scatter merrily through the heated air.

“You’d have to thank my wonderful wife’s Semblance for that.”

“Making flowers bloom in winter?”

“Preserving objects from the passage of time. Briar likes using it on flowers a lot, which doesn’t help with my allergies… I can’t say her Semblance and my health and my own Semblance match very well, like mine is even holding her back for things like this, but the flowers are beautiful.”

“Yeah, they’re great. I grew up outside the kingdoms, in the wilderness. Didn’t realise how much I missed fresh wildflowers like this until now.”

Amidst the dancing crowds, Briar Sieben sings along as she effortlessly presses the keys of her accordion, merry chords floating away from her instrument like so many birds taking flight.

“I feel unworthy of Briar sometimes, of her Semblance, of her music skill, of her… everything,” her husband sighs. “And I feel like she needs more of me, all of me and the other aliases, and even then we won’t be enough. Sometimes even all of you isn’t enough for the one you love, because only the passage of time can heal some wounds, and you can’t blame yourself for it. Something may happen eventually, something that’ll jog Huntsman Ebi out of this state, if you’re lucky… it might just take time.”

“So what do you suggest I do? Wait for my luck?”

Qrow’s too wary now to even snap back at anyone mentioning his luck these days. 

“Just enjoy the party and go for a dance or two, since there’s nothing more you can do.”

“Why don’t you practice what you preach?”

“Because I must guard the cookies, and mix the cocktails,” the former butler says, simultaneously pouring an elaborate combination of berry juices into a cup with a handful of crushed ice and thinly sliced mango, and before Qrow can wonder who would like this surprising but not half-bad mixture, Winter glides by and seizes a cup with a graceful, delighted thank-you. 

“Winter, dearie,” Klein calls out, pointing toward the shifter, “will you distract this young man from his concerns and show him the dance moves I taught you when you were little?”

When the specialist reluctantly takes Qrow’s hand, a terrified light in her eyes, the huntsman can be certain she wouldn’t have obeyed the request so quickly even if it came from the General himself. 

What Winter and the rest don’t know is that dancing around bonfires to keep away the Grimm was not uncommon back in Qrow’s tribe days, and as such he hardly needs to be shown any dance routines. He picked up some additional moves in his years of spying and generally lying around bars and nightclubs, and though he hasn’t danced much since his latest, still ongoing attempts at sobering up, he hardly has much to learn about dancing from anyone on the floor. The kids cheer and clap as he and Winter briefly try a tap dance face-off - there’s as much antagonistic chemistry between them as when they fight, but at least it keeps them in sync, and it appears to make the young huntresses and huntsmen around them happy.

Progressively, they all fall into step, until they’re all dancing with the same synchrony, the same steps over and over as they revolve around the ecstatic engaged couple, who’s more than enthusiastic to demonstrate a choreographed number of their own. Feet are springing, hands clapping together like a powerful machine, unstoppable, like a beating heart, invincible, and they don’t know how long they’ve been moving like this, moving like a single person, they don’t know how long they could still go, probably forever.

Or at least, until someone bursts into the room with a message to share. 

All Qrow hopes is that Clover was able to have some of the raisin cookies before coming here to announce something that clearly can’t wait. Because Clover deserves all the raisins in Remnant, all the cookies in Remnant, and all the raisin cookies in Remnant, and so much more. Clover deserves a hug, but Qrow knows he’ll probably be pushed away if he even tries.

And yet, something important enough managed to force him out of his self-isolation state. Someone important enough, who sent him a message on his Scroll so urgent he needs to share it with everyone. Someone who’s been feeding him the whole story of his life through this same Scroll since he woke up remembering nothing, not even his own name.

Of course it had to be James. 

If Qrow couldn’t shake Clover out of his rock bottom depression, of course James would be the one to. The third attractor in their chaotic dance, the remaining unknown in their three-body problem, where no solution could possibly exist… Of course only Clover’s compulsion to care for James, to save James, had been the only thing capable of jogging him out of it. 

To save James, who’d forgotten in his haste that Clover was no longer a member of the Ace Ops, and messaged him alongside the rest of the team with a single note, hellbent to save humanity at the cost of everything, at the cost of his own humanity. Of course James would try to pull a stunt like this, and Clover would be the one caring for him enough to stand up and stop him, stop him from losing himself before it’s too late...

* * *

James: @AceOperatives Keep Willow Schnee in check while I broadcast to the Schnee sisters. Don’t hurt her if not needed. I’ll propose an exchange between their brother’s life and the Winter Maiden. It won’t take long, I’m certain they’ll never refuse and risk Whitley’s life - General J. Ironwood

* * *

...Unless it’s already too late?

* * *

After the crowds huddled around Clover’s semi-translucent screen finally dissolved, the team leaders, Penny, and the Schneesters had made a crisis room out of one of the bedrooms upstairs. The android Maiden sits in the centre, surrounded by Ruby, Weiss, and Winter, while Qrow and Jaune lean against the wall and Clover and Robyn stay cross-legged on one of the beds. 

“I should hand myself in,” Penny declares. “It would save your brother’s life and save you all a lot of trouble.”

“But Penny... ” Ruby stutters, uncomprehending how an issue so critical could have such a simple solution. “Who’ll defend Mantle when you’re away? We don’t know if we can...”

“If the General is seen moving Atlas,” Robyn cuts in, “Salem will know that the Winter Maiden isn’t in Mantle any more, and Grimm attacks should become a lot sparser down here and focus on Atlas instead.”

“Especially when that sky city of yours enters its collision course with the whale,” Qrow says flatly.

“It has been selfish of me to stay in Mantle and attract the Grimm after me,” the robot girl says. “If I had pushed aside my personal feelings and desires to stay with my friends, and instead gone to open the Vault and obtain the Staff to attack the whale, this would have been over a long time ago, and Mantle wouldn’t have suffered so many casualties...”

“We can’t tell for sure…” Jaune argues. “Who’d have known Salem would’ve stopped attacking Mantle if she knew the Maiden wasn’t there? She might have used Mantle as a hostage to get to the General who still has the Staff anyway.”

“You are assuming that the General cares about Mantle,” Weiss points out. “We’ve already established he’s past that point.”

“It’s never too late to care,” Qrow shrugs, causing a few eyebrows to raise around the room. 

“But it’s too late to dwell on what already happened,” Specialist Schnee replies. “What should we do now? Does everyone agree with returning Penny to the General?”

“I don’t...” Clover stammers, rubbing the dark bags under his eyes. 

“ _What?_ ” Weiss lets out, her jaw dropping in surprise. “Are you suggesting we should let Whitley die?! I promised Mother I wouldn’t leave him behind. I can’t let the General sacrifice him for nothing, and if you stand in my way I’ll have to fight you.”

“No one fights anyone here,” Robyn calls out, “that never ends well. Cloves, care to elaborate?”

“...If we give in to his request, we accept that he’s right,” the former soldier says.

“What’s right isn’t always what’s good...” Ruby grumbles hesitantly.

“We avoid sacrificing Whitley, but Jimmy? Do we just accept that he’s lost his mind and move on?” her uncle adds so that the exhausted-looking Clover doesn’t have to. 

“What do you suggest? How can we save the General and Whitley too?” Winter asks.

“... you are really okay with this? Rather than making sure that Whitley’s life will be spared?” her younger sister murmurs, staring wide-eyed at the special operative. 

“James is one of the fathers I never had. If there’s any chance of making him hear reason, I want to hear it out.”

“If I walk to the other end of the city so that the location of this house can’t be tracked from my Scroll signal,” Clover suggests, “I could try talking to James.”

“I tried that, and it may have backfired,” Qrow admits, looking down at his shoes. “It may work if _you_ try, but you don’t have to. Jimmy can’t always wait to have one of us to save his ass, it’s pretty much doing him disservice at this point. He should get around to saving himself some time.”

“So what? Do we just wait?” Robyn wonders. 

“Robyn, when you protested against Jimmy’s martial law, it was to make sure that Mantle wasn’t left behind. That nobody should be left behind, even for the greater good.” the shapeshifter sighs. “And now if we have a chance of saving Jimmy… I know that it sounds selfish because he matters to Winter, to Clover, to me… that it sounds like we’re putting everything else on the line just for his soul, Whitley and the Relic and Atlas… but maybe it’s worth trying our luck… right, Clover?”

The former Ace Op nods heavily, still avoiding Qrow’s crimson glare. The shifter hopes that’s what Clover would’ve wanted, or at least the unbroken, perfected version of Clover in his mind, what James would’ve wanted, or at least that ideal version in Qrow’s head who hadn’t been so weathered by endlessly battling probabilities. But Clover right now is still too broken to say anything and not okay yet, and Ironwood might be too far gone, because recovery is a non-linear and messy and a bitch, so none of them say anything as they sit in silence.

And the silence is too weighty, too thick, almost unbreathable, like there’s nothing they can do now, nothing they could do but wait. And they may be a group of top huntsmen and rising stars, a silver-eyed warrior, and a seasonal Maiden, a group that’s faced giant monsters, criminals and terrorists, and the henchmen of an immortal villainess and survived to tell the tale, but they’ve never felt so powerless, for now only fortune can save the ones they love.

“We should still make sure that Mother and Whitley are okay,” Weiss says. 

“The Ace Ops are on site, we could ping them,” Jaune suggests. “Pietro can open an encrypted comms line so that our messages won’t be intercepted by the rest of the military, like he did for us...”

“Can we trust them?” Ruby prompts immediately. 

“I think we can… at this point we don’t exactly have the luxury to be picky,” her uncle replies. “Even so, it doesn’t tell us how we can get rid of the whale and save Atlas.”

Here comes the silence again… if it lasts any longer they’ll be able to hear the distant twinkling of the stars and the shattered moon. 

“... I have an idea,” Clover and Ruby burst out eventually at the same time. 

Just their luck. 

“Follow our fearless leaders,” Robyn smiles, twirling a long-stemmed flower from the party between her fingers with a conspiratorial look as if it were an explosive arrow.

* * *

Capt777: @AceOperatives guys, can I trust you with something? 

whos-a-good-boi: hmm. Idk. Are you still captain?

TIMBERRR: I CAN SEE YOUR TAIL WAGGING, MARROW.

Stretchyman: @Capt777 Elm means that Marrow is elated to hear from you, and to find out you are still willing to trust us

LightningHare: mood.

Stretchyman: What does that mean?

LightningHare: @Stretchyman ok boomer

That means that as the leader of Team HAZE, I announce we all wholeheartedly stand with @whos-a-good-boi in his tail-wagging endeavours

Stretchyman: Mood.

whos-a-good-boi: azfqsuyqsfOFQFDFSQQOHFOU

:D

TIMBERRR: SO WHAT’S THE DEAL, LUCKY PLANT MAN?

Capt777: Great to hear, team. 

Now we all agree, I have a small favour to ask from you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucky plant man isn’t my invention and I’m pretty sure I got this from Rhi, so go give her a hug, she’s great, she deserves all the hugs and all the raisins and all the raisin cookies. Speaking about cookies, ice cream cookie monster is something I picked up from Lili in the comments, at this point I’m just using stuff I found in the comments so thanks to her and everyone who left a comment ever, I always love reading them.  
> Sorry I’ve been away for awhile due to real life stuff, getting three wisdom teeth taken out, and procrastinating by writing other things. By the way (incoming shameless self-promotion) if you like this fic you will probably like my fantasy AU story, Don’t Ruffle the Feathers of the Archmagus (yeah I know my titles are always so weird don’t ask me I dunno either). So if you’re bored go check it out :)  
> I’ve pre-written part of chapter 20 and pretty much all of chapters 21 and 22, so there might be a bunch of consecutive updates at some point to make up for the wait. Until then, stay safe and posted xx


	20. Chats and Certainties

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternately titled How-To-Save-Atlas-2.0-new-NEW-LATEST-new2  
> Flashbacks are in italics, you know the drill. Also the non-dialogue stuff in the chat is in italics? Am I making any sense? I think not. It should be obvious when you see it. Anyway, hope you enjoy :)  
> Warnings: briefly mentioned transphobia. Also disclaimer - I don’t identify as trans and don’t speak for trans people (I know some trans people and have been in a long-term relationship with one, in case anyone is wondering... okay that's enough of my personal life for an author's note), so please point out anything you find uncomfortable with in my portrayal in the comments, thank you!

_ moderator added CookieUncle13, AceQueen, and Capt777 to the chat.  _

_ R3dLikeR0ses is now an admin. _

R3dLikeR0ses: Thanks Dr Pietro! :)

_ R3dLikeR0ses changed the chat name to How-To-Save-Atlas-2.0-new-NEW-LATEST-new2 _

R3dLikeR0ses: should I add the Happy Huntresses

VomitBoy: I have Fiona’s number, I can give it to you

Why is my username still VomitBoy??

Copycat: Because Ruby got to decide

R3dLikeR0ses: do I get to decide Fiona’s too?! 

_ VomitBoy changed their username to BananaHead _

CrazyCatLady: @BananaHead not sure that’s an improvement

BananaHead: Norzrzaffdazqpppppp

*Nnbvqsdfghjkl

*Nora stole my Scroll!!!

CrazyCatLady: Looks like you need some help?

Want a *hand*? ;)

ThunderThighs: gods dammit Yang

XxSnowPeaXx: Watch your language

zenmaster: @CrazyCatLady I thought you were more of a dog person?

CrazyCatLady: I’m more of a dog than cat person

And more of a heathen from hell than a lady

SO MAYBE I AM JUST CRAZY

FOR MY LITTLE KITTY :3

Copycat: :3

ImDaGrimmReapah: Focus, kids.

AceQueen: Focus, kids. 

XxSnowPeaXx: We should still wait for the Happy Huntresses before discussing world-saving plans

@R3dLikeR0ses did you get Fiona’s number from Jaune?

zenmaster: Nora still has his Scroll

XxSnowPeaXx: @ThunderThighs please return Jaune’s Scroll, thank you xx

ThunderThighs: fiiiiiine

U guys are no fun

_ R3dLikeR0ses added sheep.girl.is.best.girl _

sheep.girl.is.best.girl: awww Ruby that’s so sweet thankyou <3 <3 <3

_ sheep.girl.is.best.girl is now an admin. _

_ sheep.girl.is.best.girl added Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official, After_April, and Greensleeves to the chat. _

Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official: Thank you for adding us!

COMBATREADY: Salutations!

ImDaGrimmReapah: So can we start discussing serious things now?

R3dLikeR0ses: we should wait for uncle qrow and clover

@CookieUncle13 @Capt777

AceQueen: where are they now?

COMBATREADY: my sensors perceive a spike of shared body heat outside the window

XxSnowPeaXx: so are they cuddling on the balcony?!

R3dLikeR0ses: OwO

ThunderThighs: OwO

BananaHead: OwO

zenmaster: They probably need some time to themselves

AceQueen: yes.

* * *

“Yes, I know,” Qrow starts, tossing a blanket around Clover because the latter hasn’t been bothered to wear anything warmer - or sleeves, gods forbid - or grab a blanket when going out on the balcony. “I know it doesn’t mean you’re back to being okay, to being normal or your old self or whatever. But I’m glad you’re willing to talk to us now.”

Some days, the mere action of grabbing a blanket is like lifting the weight of Remnant over your shoulders. And that’s fine. 

But it helps when someone’s there to grab a blanket for you.

“It doesn’t change anything,” the former operative groans. “I tried to arrest you, I could’ve killed you out there, or Tyrian could have finished the job for me… and yet you’re here handing me a blanket.”

“Blankets are warm and nice. It wasn’t your brightest moment, but to your own defense I did attack you. Twice, if I recall. We all made stupid choices that night.”

“And… you’re okay with it?”

“Nope.”

Saying anything more still hurts too much, so they just sit in companionable silence. They still can’t move on, can’t forget again, not after finally remembering, can’t remember how to move on…

What Clover can vaguely remember from most of his life is to have been trained as a huntsman and soldier, to have been told one was fighting for the greater good, to have been told if one lost their life on the battlefield it would be as a hero. To have been told all this only to nearly be killed as an unfortunate result of a series of stupid decisions. How unheroic, how ironic, how idiotic real life turns out to be, compared to what Clover’s been told.

“Qrow, I’m scared.”

Just saying that hurts, but it lifts a weight off his shoulders.

“Callows isn’t coming back, James made sure of that. Tyrian won’t harm you again.”

“I mean… I’m scared of me, of the way I reacted, I’m just scared that I might act again like I acted out there, and others might get hurt, like James got hurt, and you might get hurt...”

Qrow takes a deep breath before answering, pale hands shivering slightly, and Clover throws the blanket over him too. The blanket feels heavy, everything feels heavy, the world’s too heavy. But Clover managed to lift it over Qrow, he managed something today, and that’s better than nothing.

“I told you about when I relapsed, right?” the shapeshifter exhaled finally.

“What?? When? By the Brothers, Qrow...”

Clover’s heart is pounding out of his ribcage at those words, the pain from his still-healing chest wound throbbing slowly, almost too familiar to even be noticed. Even though he does notice, and it does hurt.

“Hey, that was fifteen years ago, I’m in a better place now… I thought you already knew.”

One of the perks of memory loss… the former Ace Op gets to be terrified all over again at the story of Qrow’s life… and gets to be utterly floored with admiration all over again. 

“I probably did know. Did I tell you you were brave and awesome the first time I found out? Because you’re brave and awesome.”

Under the thick blanket, Clover’s hand wanders until it luckily finds Qrow’s, and their fingers entangle softly, silently, to make sure that misfortune never splits them again. The calloused skin of Qrow’s digits, those deft digits that swung and slashed with Harbinger as if it weighed nothing, are starting to feel recognisable, starting to imprint again into Clover’s mangled memory, and that’s something he can live with.

“I’m trying to give you a pep talk,” Qrow scoffs teasingly, “can you just stop distracting me with compliments?”

“Only if you’ll stop deflecting them.”

Quipping is easy, natural, trickling out of Clover like spring water even when beneath the surface nothing is okay. One may almost think by listening to him that he’s fine now. But Qrow knows, and shadows pass through his mesmerising crimson eyes like a flock of wayward blackbirds.

“Can I give you a hug, and then carry on with what I was trying to tell you?” the shifter whispers.

“... sure.” A beat of hesitation. A hint of a tremor. 

Asking for help is hard. Accepting help is hard. It’s like accepting brokenness, almost like accepting hugs will keep the shattered pieces from falling apart, accepting the parts will never be glued back together, accepting the cracks won’t ever be erased. And that’s fine too.

Qrow’s slender arms wrap around Clover’s shoulders, gently and progressively not to overwhelm him. Little heat radiates from the older huntsman’s body under the cold Mantle weather, but that’s better than nothing.

“I relapsed into drinking when she died...” the shifter resumes. “Summer. Ruby’s mum. Wow, after all that time, speaking her name out loud still sounds weird. She’d gotten me to quit before, or at least try to, and withdrawal was damn hard. But just when I thought I pulled through? She was gone. No news, no explanation, not only Oz knew. Only my sister and I felt it when it happened, but we’ll never know exactly what happened. My point is, recovery’s not a straight line. It’s everything but that. People mess up, we all mess up big time at some point, even you. And when we think things are getting better again, back to normal again, we can mess up again. No, we  _ will  _ mess up again.”

“Summer Rose was the leader of Team STRQ, right? She must’ve been one of your closest friends. I might not know or remember much, but I know your grief and your pain when she passed away were more than valid and justified, no matter how much you blamed yourself and others pinned the blame on you.”

“The point wasn’t that the grief was justified, but that my coping mechanism was fucking  _ not _ . And that was stupid. I became a burden to my nieces, a burden to their dad, to Ozpin… I thought I’d triumphed over that darkest, worst side of me, and then it came back charging at me as soon as life threw a curveball. That part of you that you hate, that part of you that inexplicably acted out that night on the tundra, that part that led you to the wrong choices in the heat of the moment, you’ll see it again, fight it again. And even if you win once it doesn’t mean you’ll never fall down again, and have to fight your way out again. Doesn’t mean anyone gets the right to stop trying to get better.”

It’s actually getting pretty warm under the blanket. 

Seconds pass by. 

It’s a lot to take in, even blocking out the rustle of scurrying kids and buzzing Scrolls in the background.

“...Right. I think I needed that. I still… need time to process that, but I think I really needed that,” Clover says, leaning slightly into the older huntsman’s shoulder.

“Right now, I think what you need is a cup of hot tea and a batch of cookies.”

“Don’t we have to make plans to save Atlas?”

“Shhh, stop thinking about duty for a second. I’ll get you one of my cookies with a lot of raisins in it.”

“I’d like that, thanks.”

* * *

Capt777: Good morning team

AceQueen: What’s with the username? You’re not Captain anymore as far as I know. 

Capt777: And last time I checked you weren’t an Ace Op, Winter.

AceQueen: I’ll have you know that Ace has other meanings that your egocentric worldview hasn’t thought of. 

CrazyCatLady: must admit it’s a good pun :D

ImDaGrimmReapah: Focus, kids.

After_April: So how do we save Atlas?

* * *

People say life is like a river. If so, then Clover’s memories are a riverbed. Never clear, still only seen through flowing transparency, through fluid turbulence, through fleeting whirlwinds. Never still, always restless, reforming always, stirred by the chaotic, competing currents. At the bottom of the riverbeds are pebbles, tiny grains of memory, tiny specks of certainty amidst an ever-blurry, ever-moving background. 

_ The river’s frozen now… of course it is, it’s Solitas in the winter, you dummies. Or at least, that’s what Elm said, before lighting it on fire with Fire Dust infused rockets from Timber. _

_ The trees are on fire now, of course it is, when you shoot Fire Dust in a highly inflammable pine forest that’s what’s bound to happen. The professors aren’t going to be happy.  _

_ The fish is delicious though, of course it is, Clover barbecued it and his family is renowned for selling premium fish products through Argus and Atlas. That’s all Clover, Elm, and their classmates can count on to redeem themselves in the teachers’ eyes after burning down the forest during initiation. _

_ All in all, the frozen-turned-burning river barbecue fish operation didn’t turn out too bad, so Clover would count that as a win for the team. Even if the force field they tried to use to contain the fire had somewhat… back-fired, for lack of a less punny term.  _

_ “So… your force fields aren’t just cloaking fields?” he asks May, twirling a skewer while she and the other girls fan the barbecue flames. “But also… amplifying fields?” _

_ “Nah, invisibility isn't my Semblance, that’s all Joanna,” she shoots a look at the taller woman, who winks before turning entirely translucent and vanishing into the half-carbonised forest background. _

_ “May and I have known each other since pre-combat school, we came up with some neat team tricks,” Joanna murmurs into Clover’s ear, causing him to jump and almost drop his fish in shock at not seeing her coming.  _

_ Almost. He manages to catch the skewer last-minute without burning himself too badly, just his luck. The girls giggle, and he chuckles nervously with them. _

_ “I’m sorry, ladies...” he mumbles, running awkward fingers through his soot-loaded hair. “I just assumed that invisibility was May’s Semblance… since, you know, Semblances sometimes manifest when we need them most, and with all the discrimination you must’ve felt like you really wanted to disappear sometimes… I’m so sorry, did that sound offensive? I really didn’t mean to...” _

_ He feels the heat ascending to his cheeks, and it’s not just from the proximity of the flames. _

_ “It’s okay, lucky boy, I get that a lot,” May cuts in before he can embarrass himself further. “Yeah, sometimes the transmisogyny in Atlas and Mantle can be bad, like really bad, but it doesn’t define me. I do other things in life too, other than being trans. Specifically, my Semblance is all about bringing out the best in people, especially other people.” _

_ “So you can take someone else’s Semblance and spread it out in a force field,” he manages to say, hoping he doesn’t sound too much like a hot mess of an uneducated fisher boy from Argus. _

_ “See? Lucky plant boy here isn’t too stupid,” Elm comments, giving him a vigorous pat in the back. “Clover, are we both thinking the same thing?” _

_ Unfortunately, when Elm is up to something it doesn’t look like there’s a way to stop her. Clover sighs heavily when he finally suggests: _

_ “May, can you try your Semblance on me?” _

_ She nods, and expands her force field onto the whole bunch of children by the barbecue fire as her hands glow blue.  _

_ Robyn’s brought a deck of cards, because of course she’s brought cards to initiation, she’s always prepared. She, May, and Elm start a game while Clover and Joanna finish tending to the barbecue. And when the players all get royal flushes on the first game, they know they’ve got a fun night ahead of them. _

Years later, the clovers that grew back in that patch of burnt forest are still four-leaved.

* * *

Capt777: First of all, 

BananaHead: First of all?

AceQueen: Why do I not like where this is going?

Capt777: James’s plan is sound.

CrazyCatLady: WHAT

ThunderThighs: WHAT???

Capt777: I mean, his end-goal to drop Atlas on the whale. 

AceQueen: Are you out of your mind?

Capt777: Yes!

But

The Staff has unlimited power. We could harness it to keep the pieces of Atlas together, and land it as slowly as possible next to Mantle to minimise damage. 

Is that possible, Dr Polendina?

moderator: In theory, yes. 

Capt777: And in practice?

moderator: In practice, there is a series of failsafes designed to ensure Atlas lands safely in the event it should fall.

CookieUncle13: But?

moderator: but we need people who know how they work, and if they could withstand the fact that Atlas will crash into the whale.

BananaHead: Didn’t you design them? Don’t you know how they work?

moderator: I’m a bio-engineer, not a miracle worker.

zenmaster: Who designed them?

AceQueen: I don’t like where this is going…

Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official: I don’t like where this is going…

_ moderator added DrVolts to the chat. _

DrVolts: I designed them. 

AceQueen: @DrVolts Good morning to you too.

Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official: @DrVolts humility was never your forte.

Greensleeves: So you know if they’d work if we drop Atlas onto the whale?

DrVolts: To what margin of error would you want an estimate? Even using cutting-edge algorithms of my own design, I would need time to run computations

Capt777: We have one day. 

DrVolts: ONE DAY?

DrVolts: The pieces will be spinning out in many different directions after hitting the whale. 

My algorithm has not been designed to account for this since James and that oversized ego of his fired me from the job before I was done. And predicting that we’d ever have to collide the city with a giant floating sky whale would have been highly non-trivial.

So in all likelihood, we’ll be fine if we override automatic commands and monitor the landing systems manually.

If you wouldn’t mind serving as my assistant, Pietro. This is a two-person job, after all. 

AceQueen: @moderator I applaud your patience for collaborating with this pretentious rapscallion for so many years. 

CookieUncle13: “In all likelihood”... I hate to be the one seeing the cup half empty, but do we need to plan another failsafe in case your failsafes don’t work??

I mean, better safe than sorry..

R3dLikeR0ses: MOOD.

COMBATREADY: WE CAN NEVER BE TOO READY!

Capt777: I HAVE A PLAN

Hill_for_Councilwoman_Official: You always do.

After_April: Mood.

Capt777: @After_April with Jaune’s Semblance boosting you, do you think you could project a force field over all of Atlas?

After_April: ???

Hill_for_Councilwoman_Official: ??????

AceQueen: ?!?!?!!!!!

After_April: For whose Semblance? Sure hope it’s gonna be a useful one.

* * *

_ It’s raining outside. The boat hangar’s metal carcass and its rusty steel containers vibrate every time heavy raindrops hit the iron roof. The humid air echoes every time their weapons clash, again and again, but the siblings are too absorbed in their sparring to notice, too absorbed in making the most of those last moments they can spend together before Clover has to head off to Atlas Academy.  _

_ Ivy does notice the rain puddles on the floor however, and crouching down on one knee to set her palm against the humid concrete, she activates her Semblance. Within the puddle, the water swirls upward and takes the shape of a translucent trident. She only needs to open her hand and for the weapon to fly to her within a fraction of a second, called by her aquakinesis. And toss the trident into the air, straight toward her elder brother before he can parry with Kingfisher. _

_ She flicks a switch on her Dust-infused bracelet. There’s a flash of silver light. And when her projectile grazes Clover’s shoulder as he narrowly dodges and impales itself into the floor, it’s made out of pure ice. She’s quick to dance under the fishing line of Clover’s weapon to go collect her trident and raise it to block an attack. Before swivelling swiftly and striking back in a flurry of slashes and furious flourishes. A smile never leaving his lips, he matches her strike for strike, knowing her style too well as ice repeatedly collides with metal.  _

_ He blocks a diagonal slash, spins around to convert the momentum into a kick to her knee, and throws out his hook to loop around a prong of her weapon and redirect it into the concrete floor, away from him. But she only smirks in response, and turns on a Fire Dust function on her bracelet. The trident melts back into water, effortlessly flowing around Kingfisher, now intangible, now unstoppable. Still grinning, she thrusts straight at Clover’s throat.  _

_ Her brother’s ears recognise the faint whistle signalling the trident’s turned back to ice, ice sharp enough to tear through his Aura. He’s learnt that the hard way, that one she used that same fire-and-ice combination to bypass his defenses and slash him in the bicep, hellbent to prove that his luck didn’t make him perfect or invulnerable. A scar still marks his skin there, fortunately their younger sisters gave him a kerchief that he could wrap around there while looking suitably fashionable. This time however, he recognises the trick and wraps his fist around the shaft of her trident as soon as it reforms, deflecting it away from his neck and tightening his grip enough to cause the ice to crackle.  _

_ “You won’t get me twice that way, Ivy,” he teases with a wink.  _

_ “Learn to watch your back, shamrock,” she snaps back.  _

_ And he’s never truly learnt, for before he can turn around, a Dust blade whistles past his earlobe from behind him before Ivy deflects it with her Aura. With a sharp tug onto her trident, he swaps their positions, putting his sister in the way of the knife-thrower - one of the twins, Lily, barely twelve years old but already enrolled into a pre-combat programme. Lily, twirling atop a nearby steel container marked with the logo of their fishing family business to accelerate the blades she keeps throwing down at her older siblings. _

_ Clover’s never truly learnt, because he’s never really had to. He and Ivy have only recently involved their younger sister in their familiar spars, and Lily’s always sided with him, idolising her eldest brother too much for anything less. While Ivy’s busy spinning out her trident in complex trajectories to block the raining dust knives from the youngest combatant, he deploys his weapon like a grappling hook, dragging himself atop the same container as Lily so she can’t use the advantage of her elevated position on him.  _

_ “Why are you two ganging up against me today?” he grumbles in her direction, raising his weapon like a staff in a high guard position.  _

_ Before answering, she produces two more knives from the Gravity Dust infused in her skirt and brandishes them fiercely. _

_ “Because it’s the last time we get to fight our big bro before he leaves for Atlas!” Lily exults, charging toward him as if for a hug, but with a knife in each hand, which seems to be how people show affection in the family.  _

_ He blocks one of her blades with the hook of Kingfisher and deflects the other by throwing out his horseshoe. The knife rebounds against the metal objects, tumbling in mid-air before Clover can spin around and kick it with a roundhouse kick, sending it toward Ivy who blocks with her bracelet… an explosion echoes, shaking the hangar’s thin walls, and when the commotion subsides all that’s left of her trident is a haphazard heap of assorted Dust shards.  _

_ While he still gapes in shocked contentment at his actual ability to do that, Ivy sneers at his smug expression, and grunting in frustration, she casts her fishing net, capturing her younger sister and hurling her off the container and toward the floor with a muffled yelp. Clover’s eyes widen in panic, but Lily manages to land safely last-minute with a puff of Gravity Dust from her skirt. His first reflex is to lash out with Kingfisher, tripping Ivy in her step and binding her legs before she can get to their younger sister still entangled in the net.  _

_ Diving down the container, he lands elastically next to the girls, tracing a supple arc with the pole part of his weapon to block a thrown knife and a series of punches from Ivy in one smooth motion. Shortly jabbing the butt of his fishing rod into her abdomen, he pushes the older girl back, just for an instant to check if Lily’s fine and out of the fishing net… only for the knife-thrower to toss the net onto him, pinning him down to the floor while she prances free, skirts glittering in the humid air.  _

_ The girls have both learnt new tricks, and sparring against them will be harder next time when he comes back from Atlas… if he ever does… But the familiar sound of rising tide distracts him from his thoughts, and looking ahead he sees Ivy, raising her hand as all the puddles from the hangar lift off the ground, forming a single, waist-high wave that rolls toward Clover and Lily. Despite the net weighing him down, he manages to push his sister and himself out of the way, just his luck and the work of years of training and working out. Clover sighs in relief as the wave washes through harmlessly, barely lapping the base of the container.  _

_ The force is nowhere near enough to cause it to topple over… but the energy from the collision reverberates throughout the whole structure of piled up containers, all belonging to the family business. And atop the pile, one plummets. Spinning multiple times in mid-air, before casting a shadow that quickly expands straight over Clover and Lily’s heads.  _

_ The shadow’s growing too fast. Falling too near. And he doesn’t know what to do. He wants to do something should do something has to do something… but before he can react, a cry escapes Lily. Followed by a wave of energy radiation circularly from her body. First, it catches the net… and it becomes weightless, drifting as if gravity no longer affected it. Then, Clover, then Ivy and the mess of Dust fragments surrounding her, then the containers. They all drift slowly, levitating softly as if floating through space, or through water, but silently. And pushing off the previously falling container with one hand, Clover knows that the collision was averted.  _

_ Until Lily lets out a sudden gasp, her Aura shattering as she falls to her knees. Everything regains its weight, and as soon as his feet meet the floor her brother darts ahead to catch her before she can hurt herself in her fall.  _

_ “What were you thinking?” he calls out more dramatically than aggressively at Ivy while still holding Lily between his arms.  _

_ “I… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to...” _

_ “Group hug?” Lily cuts in weakly, eyelashes fluttering with a candidness to which her older sister has no choice but comply. “Who thinks my new Semblance is cool?” _

_ “I do,” Ivy answers, still too worried about her sister breaking her Aura and almost getting badly hurt to register Lily’s Semblance saved the day.  _

_ “We’re lucky you unlocked it just now,” Clover adds, and despite the awkward configuration of the hug they can all hear the wink in his voice. _

_ “Stop it with the luck jokes, shamrock,” the older girl murmurs into his ear.  _

_ “It wasn’t a joke,” he whispers back without missing a beat. “Can’t you at least apologise?” _

_ “I did, shamrock, got water in your ears? Anyway, I’m sorry, guys, I didn’t mean to drop the container, I shouldn’t have done that. Look I even got you a present to say I’m sorry.” _

_ “How did you know you were gonna be sorry?” He throws his hands up in the air expansively, causing a few groans for breaking the collective hug. “Oh wait, you always find a way to almost kill me just to prove a point to me or Pa or whoever. I can’t help it if my Semblance makes me lucky at the expense of others, Ivy.” _

_ “Look, I got you a present to say goodbye before your leave for the Academy, but I guess I of all people got lucky because I can use it as an apology present now.” _

_ “Will you stop it now with the luck jokes?” he echoes, mockingly imitating the raspy tone of her voice.  _

_ “Stop complaining, or I’m keeping your present.” _

_ She fumbles with the pockets of her coat, then both the back and front pockets of her jeans, before extracting a shiny trinket that sits squarely in the middle of her palm. A metal pin shaped like a clover leaf and horseshoe.  _

* * *

“Clover… you’re sure you don’t want to come?” Jaune shouts, causing the former Ace Op to flinch slightly. 

He has to shout though, for Maria is getting the airship ready and May and Joanna are there to cloak it while they fly to Argus and back. Clover has to admit that communicating by chat messages, initially intended to also involve Pietro and Maria at the pharmacy and the Happy Huntresses at their headquarters, and eventually the Ace Ops without crowding the Siebens’ living room, was considerably less stressful and more manageable. Thanks to which it feels like he managed something today.

“No, not really… I do miss my family in a way, or at least from what little I remember of them… but it’d be an awkward reunion with what little time there is.”

The noise from the plane hovering atop the street is almost overbearing, as Qrow and Clover watch from the balcony. 

“I’ll say hi to my sister and her family on the way. Should I send my regards to your other siblings if I meet them, then?”

“Ivy will likely be away at sea, and the twins are away for their studies...”

“And your parents?”

Clover recoils under the blanket instinctively, while his mind spirals out in questioning, in an attempt to recall the little details he’s got left in his memory about his father or his mother. There’s fragments of shouts, of laughter, of tears, of bedtime stories, but nothing more than fragments. But there’s also one footnote at the bottom of a file James made for him, and in hindsight he wonders how detailed James’s memory must have been to remember that, and how thoughtful it must have been of him to write it down.

“Her favourite flowers were anemones,” Clover finally utters. “You know where the flower market is, right? And the Argus graveyard? You won’t have trouble finding her, from the kingfisher statues.”

And though he doesn’t remember her in all her liveliness, all her realness, all her brokenness, all her hopefulness, though he wishes he’d remember so some of her can live on within his memories saying as much still hurts. Saying any more would’ve hurt too much, but Clover doesn’t need to, Jaune already understands.

“Yes, Cap,” the blonde boy says, “Don’t worry, I’ll drop by with the flowers. I promise.”

He produces his best attempt at a reassuring smile and a salute before the ship departs southward. 

“Want another cookie?” Qrow comments to his blanket partner after a while.

“Yeah, sure…” Clover starts shakily, “Wait Qrow, don’t go just yet.”

“Huh?”

“I… I think you should have this.”

And detaching the pin hanging off his garments, the pin his sister had given him on that day, he places it into Qrow’s hand. The contact between their palms is warm and clammy, but the pin is cold, still, stable, like a harbour amidst the storm.

“I’m sure I can go get you a cookie without causing the world to explode, lucky charm...”

They both chuckle briefly.

“No, I mean, keep it until… until I feel better. Until I feel worthy of it again. My sister gave it to me, it means a lot to me and these days I feel like wearing it is doing disservice to the trust she placed in me.”

“It’s not. And I’m not worthy of it, not anymore than you are...”

There is a hesitation floating in the air, floating weightlessly, and only the weight of the pin keeps them down, keeps them anchored. 

Qrow stares back at aqua eyes like a wounded bird, with that vulnerable disbelief that Clover or anyone would trust him with something so personal, with that pain that never truly leaves him because he doesn’t feel worthy either, doesn’t feel okay enough yet, may never feel okay enough.

“But?” Clover mouths hopefully.

Something changes about the lighting. And Qrow’s irises seem to light up as if in pride, as if grateful that Clover’s hope isn’t entirely gone, and will never be entirely stifled whatever life throws at them. As if honoured that Clover is willing to open up to Qrow, to others, to trust them to help carry a burden he can’t lift alone. To trust others and love others even if he’s still healing, because he’s still healing, because he’s still trying and failing. And he’ll fail again, fall again, and get back up again. 

And he’s ready to risk falling alongside Qrow, to fall alongside James, because getting back up together is worth the risk. Because he knows for certain Qrow will do the same for him. Because he knows James has done the same for him in his own way, and would do it again a thousand times. Because that’s broken, but that’s brave, that’s selfish, but that’s something. 

And something is better than nothing, and anything helps.

“But I’ll try. I swear I’ll try, Clover.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woops, so Qrow has Clover’s pin now. How cliché. I’ve been willing to put this scene in for a while and it kept getting pushed back. Sorry this chapter is kind of a long mess of stuff. Next one will be less heavy, kinda.  
> To anyone who hasn’t read my Fair Game Week stuff, I hope the fact that Ivy’s Semblance is aquakinesis didn’t come too much out of nowhere. Anyway, if you haven’t read that yet and want to see more (grownup) Ivy, you can head over to my Fair Game Week fics, it’s the one called Octopuses Have Two Hearts. It’s one of my favs in there but you can look around at the other stuff too ;)  
> Oh also I don’t wanna criticise the trans portrayal in the show, I like that there’s representation to start with, this is just my own take. I just hope there’ll be something canonically confirmed about May being trans next volume, without that taking over all of her character. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they revealed/confirmed both May and Joanna’s Semblances. Again, this is just my personal take, nothing more.  
> Next two chapters are already written so you might get the next one tomorrow/Monday and the one after that on Wednesday. Till then, stay safe and posted xx


	21. Like a dog in the manger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Zwei saves Mantle. ‘Nuff said.   
> Warnings: mentions of racism, mentions of vomiting (no actual vomiting), swearing, Whitley deserves his own warning

As soon as his message is recorded, Ironwood’s first reflex is to check up on the poor puppy who’s huddling and shaking against his legs. Carefully massaging the terrified creature and ruffling the fluffy black and white hair, he mentally curses one Whitley Schnee for daring to kick Zwei, pondering how death by a bullet through the head is probably a too merciful ending for such a heathen from hell. Enthralled in his dog-comforting endeavours, the General forgets that…

“You know you need to press the send button for it to work, right?” Whitley interrupts, pointing toward said button on Ironwood’s Scroll. 

Amidst the shock and the confusion and the utter hatred for the white-haired kid and the flashbacks from Beacon, only slowly does James register that his public message proposing an exchange between Penny and Whitley didn’t go through and wasn’t broadcasted, just because he didn’t press the send button. Profiting from the headmaster’s visible state of disarray and the fact he’s holding a corgi in his arms, the teenager bends down over the dog’s manger and picks up a slice of ham, that he wraps around the General’s Scroll before tossing it through the air. 

And without missing a beat, Zwei expertly pounces up and catches, swallowing the ham whole and James’s Scroll with it. 

Ordinarily, Ironwood’s superior reflexes as a trained huntsman and the General of Remnant’s largest armed force would have prevented such an occurrence. But in his current state and facing the unpredictable and frankly nonsensical actions of the Schnee heir, all James could have done was watch while it all unfolded. 

“What did you do that for?” he growls at the boy, never letting go of the dog between his arms. 

“So that you can’t issue a message saying you’ll kill me in twenty-four hours, so that I won’t be killed in twenty-four hours. I’m just buying time for my own life,” the boy retorts, quirking a single white brow. “I thought a General of all people would figure that out.”

“But why did you kick Zwei?” the General snaps back. “What was that for?”

“To distract you while I stole your Scroll, obviously. Kicked puppies distract people every time.”

“Your mother didn’t teach you the manners of a thief and a kicker of puppies.”

“Oh, but I had the best of teachers.”

“Jacques Schnee,” Ironwood sneers, wishing he could get that scoundrel out of his cell just to punch him in the face and put him back into custody. 

Unfortunately, he can’t do that, because…

“My Scroll controls the security system of my quarters. Since I set them on lockdown before my Scroll was  _ eaten _ , we won’t be able to get out until we get the phone out of Zwei.”

“Can’t you just transfer rights to another device? Like my Scroll or some other terminal?”

“It would request my approval from my Scroll via fingerprint identification or retinal scan. If my Scroll were destroyed or otherwise compromised, what you suggested would’ve been possible, but it’s likely perfectly intact within Zwei’s stomach, so I hope you’re happy with yourself. Besides, because of the lockdown your own Scroll won’t be able to emit or receive calls or messages from the outside world. You are, after all, technically my hostage.”

“This is stupid. Who designed this system?”

“... Arthur Watts.”

“I knew he was creepy, but not that he’s an idiot. I wonder why my father trusted him if he’s so retarded.”

“Then you should accept that even your father isn’t perfect.”

“Isn’t there a manual override for the lockdown?” the kid fidgets anxiously, and the General deduces he’s hit a nerve at last, causing Whitley to suddenly change topics.

“There is one for the main door. I’ll look in the library if I can find my manuals for that. Technology has always been Arthur’s strong suit, out of the whole team. Get that Scroll out of the dog while I work on the override.”

James sets down the corgi next to Whitley, causing the creature to immediately growl and bark angrily.

“... But why should I be the one working on that dog who hates me?”

“Who hates you  _ for good reason _ .”

“But I gave him ham!”

“I will not even comment on that.”

“Can’t I be the one who deals with the door technology? We young people are good at that at least!”

“It requires my biometric identification, just like my Scroll does.”

And leaving the dismayed kid to his devices, the General stomps toward the library, toward that shelf of old dusty leaflets ang instruction manuals no one would ever read through in their right mind for entertainment, and that no one would ever read through in their right mind, ever, period. He only returns a good half-hour later, slightly dishevelled, only to find Whitley fighting the battle of his life against a sizable can of button mushrooms probably from a forgotten drawer of Ironwood’s seldom-used kitchen.

“How to even open this thing?” he whines, poking his tongue out in effort and concentration.

“I suppose you have enough servants to never have needed to open a tin can of your own,” the General observes, increasingly frustrated with the child. 

“At least I’m not a human-sized tin can myself,” Whitley retorts, looking up and down the prosthetic parts of James’s body. 

“Why do you want to open this?” Ironwood sighs while considering the lined up cans of mushrooms and tomatoes the kid lined up next to Zwei’s bowl. 

“I’ve read that those things can make dogs vomit,” the kid shrugs. “I tried chocolate, but it didn’t do anything, so...”

A strong metal hand slaps him loudly across the cheek, interrupting his words. And coming from a  _ human-sized tin can _ , that must sting. 

“You fed Zwei chocolate, which is known to be toxic to dogs and could have caused a medical emergency for a corgi of this size?!”

A savage steel backhand rebounds against his other cheekbone before he can reply, and the General must admit that was quite satisfying. Even though he wouldn’t try that again, lest Willow kill him later if she figures out he gave her son a concussion.

“And you’re determined to make that poor corgi throw up, after kicking him?!!”

“But you told me to get the Scroll out of your pet’s stomach!” the kid mutters, both hands covering his reddened cheeks.

“You could have tried other ways to aid his digestion rather than disrupt it!”

“Like what, prunes? Do prunes work on dogs?”

The boy draws his Scroll to look up that very question, only to be reminded that the lockdown cut his access to the net, and that he’ll likely never figure out the answer. 

“I deduce you haven’t had any luck with the door,” Whitley comments, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. 

“I got halfway through the manual. But one step required my fingerprint, and since my only hand with fingerprints left was burnt in my fight against Arthur, when I tried that it shut down the system and prevented me from trying again in the next hour.”

The boy scoffs wordlessly, running a diaphanous hand through his snow-white hair before responding. 

“Fingerprints can be collected using tape, I’ve seen that in a film. I’m sure there must be some of your fingerprints somewhere in your apartment still, like on the keyboard of your personal terminal.”

James hates to admit it, but the kid isn’t stupid, not unlike his sisters and their mother, team WILW’s fearless leader.

“Then try that. Tape is in the second drawer from the top on the right hand side of the desk, in the far left corner. Now that you’ve started opening this can, I’ll have to finish opening it and cook something out of it, so it doesn’t go to waste.”

“You can cook?” the boy tilts his head in surprise.

“I can make an omelette.”

“What’s an omelette?”

* * *

“I must admit this doesn’t taste half bad,” Whitley comments, munching on the mushroom and tomato omelette while James methodically sprays salt and pepper. “I wonder why the chefs at the Schnee Manor never made this recipe.”

“Because eggs are inexpensive, so it’s viewed as a poor people's dish?”

“Perhaps? We do have scrambled eggs for breakfast sometimes, but it isn’t near as good. We all prefer croissants in the morning anyway. ”

“Scrambled eggs are boring,” James agrees, mentally berating himself for agreeing with anything out of the mouth of that accursed teenager. “And don’t you even dare feed a piece of that omelette to Zwei.”

“So you’d sacrifice human lives for your cause and shoot a defenseless minor point blank, but you refuse to make a dog vomit?”

“No discussions of vomiting during mealtimes, please.”

“Sounds more like you’re avoiding to discuss your questionable scale of morals.”

“I shot a minor once, and am still blaming myself to this day. We all make mistakes in moments of fear, no one is perfect, not even your father. But in all honesty, I don’t believe a single second that your sisters wouldn’t hand me the Winter Maiden to save your life.”

“Even so, had your broadcast gone live it’d have caused unrest in Mantle, with people figuring out you haven’t just abandoned them, but have become a full-on tyrant ready to sacrifice the life of not Mantlese, but Atlesian children. That’d have attracted the Grimm, which would have cost human lives.”

James hadn’t thought of that, with everything going on and no one to advise him or even listen to him. 

“It’s a good thing Zwei ate my Scroll and prevented that from happening then. Zwei single-handedly saved Mantle from the Grimm.”

“Where’s my recognition now?  _ I _ single-handedly saved Mantle by feeding your Scroll to the dog,” Whitley protests by chewing increasingly dramatically. 

“Too bad I don’t believe for a single second that your interest in the wellbeing of Mantle is genuine.”

“Before this whole Salem debacle, most of my company’s workers lived in Mantle. My father always said a CEO needs to be a good shepherd, keeping the sheep calm so they don’t turn against him, or at least minimising the number of unhappy sheep that turn against him.”

“A shepherd is nothing without a good sheep dog. Zwei single-handedly saved Mantle. I rest my case.”

“Single-pawedly,” the kid pouts after wiping the remains of oily omelette off his lips.

“Single-mouthedly.”

“Single-stomachedly.”

“Shut up and eat.”

* * *

Even after they’re done eating, they still have time to kill before being able to retry overriding the door. It turns out that omelettes aren’t only delicious, but fast to make, even for someone who has minimal cooking skills like James. The General tries to get caught up with paperwork, only to remember that the lockdown also cut off his own terminals from the central networks, such that he can’t access most of the files he needs to work. Plus, leaving Whitley to roam his apartment and lurk around Zwei unattended is a downright hazard. 

Therefore, when the kid’s whims lead him to find an old chess set under the living room table and challenges Ironwood to a game, Ironwood has no choice but to oblige.

James hasn’t played much chess in recent years. The game remains associated with Ozpin in his mind, as James regularly played against the Beacon headmaster back in the day, as well as occasionally against Qrow or Glynda. Ozpin was a chessmaster and unbeatable at his own game, it was almost ridiculous and he was way too smug about it. The shapeshifter was usually too hot-headed to plan his moves meticulously, but his unpredictability sometimes gave him an edge over the Atlesian leader, unless it was the sight of his fascinating red eyes that distracted the General from the game. The blonde professor on the other hand was careful and logical, and only her lack of creativity and outside-the-box thought allowed James to gain the upper hand every now and then. 

After Ozpin’s passing, they haven’t played again. It doesn’t help that the mere thought of a black queen piece elicits unwanted memories in the General’s mind. His subordinates aren’t chess players either. Clover prefers luck or agility games, and James never has the heart to resist that charming smile of his Ace Op leader’s. Winter doesn’t enjoy games, especially those that remind her of her father. 

Chess is Jacques’s favourite pastime to appear educated, so it’s no surprise his son takes after him in that regard as well. During his work visits to the Schnee Manor, Ironwood had regularly discussed with the SDC CEO over a game of chess. Jacques often boasted to be so talented that he only truly felt challenged when playing against himself - it turns out, his chess skills are abysmal, and in their games James has to consciously pretend to play just as terribly not to offend the businessman and ensure his company’s continued support in matters of state. 

In a word, James hates chess. And yet there he sits, half-heartedly playing a game he hates against a teenager he hates under the eerie red lights of his quarters under lockdown, just to kill time. Half-heartedly playing, until he realises Whitley holds him in check, and figures out the kid had been brushing up on his chess skills and studying the game over the years, just for a chance to impress his father. 

Just as James thinks he can’t hate the situation any more, he’s reminded that he especially hates smalltalk while playing chess. 

“Shouldn’t you be walking the dog?” the young heir nods in the direction of the corgi who alternately tilts his head from one side to the other with his pink tongue hanging out sideways as the adversaries make their moves. 

“I should, but I can’t right now, for obvious reasons. Sorry Zwei, be a good boy and wait for daddy, okay?”

“I can’t believe the General of the Atlesian army has time for duties as petty as walking a dog.”

“Zwei is not mine, I am simply… keeping him for a friend. Besides, if I’m busy your sister will assist me in my dog-sitting duties, or Operative Amin will.”

It’s all a strange story, since James doesn’t even know Qrow’s supposed friend for whom he’s keeping the corgi. But at least he can tell Zwei’s presence has done wonders in reducing his stress levels… until now.

“The dog Faunus, your diversity hire? Isn’t that racist?”

“First of all, Operative Amin was selected amongst hundreds of applicants for his abilities alone, regardless of his race. Second, what do you know of racism, with the way your company treats Faunus?”

“My company gives Faunus employment. Most of them would be jobless without the SDC.”

“That’s what your father told you. But did he tell you he’s tried to find every possible loophole to pay them below the minimum wages imposed by the Atlas Council?”

“And yet, the Faunus still line up by dozens to get a job with us, because they have no other choice. And yet, the Atlesian military still has to work with us, buy our Dust, our robots, our technology, because  _ you  _ have no other choice. Such are the laws of the market.”

“This is not a reason to provide them with less than adequate working conditions.”

“Mines are dark and explosive. Faunus can see in the dark, humans can’t, and Dust lamps are explosion hazards. We’re simply employing the Faunus for the jobs at which they’re most skilled, and more adequate than humans.”

“It’s no reason to lock them up in cages.”

“You’re in check, old man,” the boy taunts, threatening James’s king with his bishop, which the headmaster knows he can’t take out without sacrificing his knight, unless he blocks the bishop’s way by retreating his rook…

The game ends in a draw, and both opponents are too competitive to let it slide, immediately setting up another game. James likes winning because it makes him feel in control. Whitley likes winning because he likes winning. 

They play endlessly, game after game, until they’ve forgotten about the door and its timing issues. Instead, they play game after game, and James wins just as much as he loses. General James A. Ironwood, supreme commander of the Atlesian army, its robots, and its air fleet, wins as much as he loses when challenged to a game of chess by a fifteen-year-old boy who’s only been trying, with little success, to make his father proud. Fighting the sensation of shame tingling across his body and the onset of nausea due to his still recovering state after being poisoned, James rubs the bridge of his nose and wonders whether to tip his king and go take a nap, seeing how tired of this game and this kid he is.

Before he can decide, an earthquake shakes the room and tips his king for him. Together with all the other pieces, that roll off the chessboard and clatter on the carpeted floor, for that matter. 

Ironwood turns to the door, searching for the source of the deafening sound. Only to find Operative Zeki’s recognisable, incredibly thin Aura hands pushing their way between the heavy locked doors, creating an opening big enough for the fists of a semi-translucent Beringel to finish the job. 

When the door is finally pushed entirely open, on the outside stands Willow Schnee, fists clenched and absolutely irate, before her summoned giant winged ape, the newest addition to her collection she hasn’t hesitated to use to free her only son. Flanking her on either side are team HAZE. On the left, Vine holds his namesake Aura appendages still deployed and Harriet rolls her shoulders with brandished fists as if to spring into battle. On the right, Elm twirls Timber easily in one hand while Marrow activates his Semblance with a single shout, freezing Whitley and the General in place. 

“That is an interesting development,” Vine notes, pensively inspecting the chessboard and the pieces knocked over to the side. 

“So what?” Elm shrugs. “Aren’t we going to rescue the kid anyway? Mrs. Schnee?”

“Wait,” Harriet orders before any of the others can move even a hair. “The hostage might not be the only one who needs saving. Marrow, please.”

The Faunus drops his stay command, allowing James and Whitley to move again, but the headmaster is almost too preoccupied to notice, reminiscing the last time someone said something to that effect.

_ “I have the world to save, Qrow.” _

_ “And I have you to save!” _

_ It hurts, every word, every single syllable from the shifter’s mouth hurts. And yet James has to put on an unfeeling facade, hoping it’d hurt Qrow less that way, has to put his duty above all, always... _

_ “I don’t matter if it means Salem can be stopped.” _

_ That is the only logical course of action. Even everything he feels for Qrow should be pushed aside before the fate of humanity, and he wishes the shapeshifter would understand... _

_ “Listen to me, James!” _

_ The Atlesian to contemplate Qrow’s words for a second, as if hesitating... _

_ “General,” Ironwood finally rectifies. _

“Clover or Qrow won’t always be there to save you from yourself, General,” Harriet comments, interrupting his flowing thoughts. 

“So is that why you’re here? To save me?” her commanding officer sighs. “Others have tried and failed before. Even Qrow, even Clover.”

“C’mon boss, we’re not  _ that  _ stupid, even without Captain Ebi,” Marrow says, throwing his hands up in the air. “We won’t try to convince you, just to give you a nudge in the right direction... or whatever direction we think is right. Or at least that’s what we agreed on with our former boss...”

Former boss? Had Clover been in touch with his Ace Ops? How was the former operative faring since he remembered?

“We also wanted to check you were both okay in there, and make sure that it stays that way,” Elm adds almost maternally while Willow races to her child’s side, checking he remains uninjured despite his embarrassed attempts to push her away.

“We are both okay… for now...” Whitley assures, desperate to get his anxious mother out of his hair. 

“So what happens next depends on you, General,” Harriet claims. “Only you can save yourself now.”

“Awaiting for orders, General,” Vine says, folding his hands behind his back. 

“I don’t recall requesting your presence, Operatives,” the General replies. 

“But we’re here, and we’ll stay until we’re sure everyone here is safe,” the leader says. 

“That’s not what my soldiers are supposed to do...” James stutters. 

“No. But that’s what friends do,” Willow murmurs under her breath, finally noticing her summon overstayed its utility and making the giant winged Beringel dissolve with a single snap of her fingers.

Friends may not always be there when you need them. Friends may not always be there to save you if you trip, to catch you if you fall. 

But sometimes, friends care. 

And right now, that’s a bit too much to bear, too much on James’s tired mind, and he needs a good night’s sleep, except that the adrenaline coursing through every fibre and cable of him won’t allow that, and he needs his body to move like a restless, rusted robot so his heart can feel numb and his mind can go to sleep for a while…

“I think I need to take a walk, you can take care of Master Schnee. Make sure he doesn’t touch a single hair of the dog… and call someone to fix the door.”

James just needs to go somewhere where he can breathe, without so many people in his face, so close and yet out of control… He’s grateful for their friendship, but they’re right, he can’t always wait for Qrow or Clover or Willow or someone else to rescue him. He needs to save himself now, and to that purpose he needs a little time and space to himself. 

“What are you waiting for, Mrs. Schnee?” Harriet hisses long instants after her superior has left the room. “Go after the boss and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid? That’s what friends are for, right? Elm and Marrow can deal with Whitley, you can trust them to be the best team mum and big brother.”

“I am deducing this leaves me with the heavy responsibility of protecting this dog against whoever dares to hurt him,” Vine concludes, soundlessly cracking the immaterial knuckles within his Aura hands for effect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, that was basically a chapter of pure crack.   
> I’m not even sorry. I just really wanted Whitley to get slapped.   
> Next chapter’s gonna be fun. Cya then, stay safe, warm, and posted xx


	22. Like a three-body problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's an update schedule  
> fuck the update schedule  
> ohhh uhhh I didn't even warnings  
> warning: no raisins

“We’ve already done this, right?” Clover mutters nervously, never letting go of Qrow’s hand as they stare down the airship cargo bay, ready to jump out. “Together, I mean.”

“What’s up, lucky charm? Self-conscious about your landing strategy?” the shapeshifter teases with fondness in his tone. “Last time we jumped out of a flying airship together, you were saluting and doing triple backflips like the show-off you are.”

“Really? The only time I remember, we… I...”

_ I jumped out of the airship without even looking back at you or Robyn or Tyrian… _ his teal eyes say what his quivering lips never could. 

That time wasn’t a flying airship in Qrow’s mind anyway, that was a crashing airship. Semantics.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you leave me behind this time,” the shifter assures, tightening his grip onto the former captain’s palm. “I’ll be here with you, I promise.”

And to emphasize his point, he leans over to drop a small kiss onto Clover’s cheek. 

The ex-Ace Op turns to Qrow, a blush quickly blossoming across his features as he leans in closer to…

“Ready for drop-off, boys?” May calls out from the cockpit, flanked by Ren and Joanna who help her render their plane invisible from both the Grimm and the Atlesian military. 

“Aye, Ma’am,” the scythe-wielder responds.

In the pilot’s seat, Robyn lowers the ship over the streets of Atlas, causing Qrow to reflexively flinch at the sight of those infamous automatic anti-bird turrets even though the devices can evidently not register their presence. 

“Don’t worry, I’m here for you,” Clover echoes softly at the sensation of the shifter’s clammy fingers through their clasped hands. 

And with that, they jump out of the airplane. 

Before Qrow can decide whether shapeshifting and being at risk of the turrets firing at him or whether drawing Harbinger and executing his human-form landing strategy from faraway skirt days would be safer, Clover’s arm wraps securely around his waist. Employed like a grappling hook, Kingfisher latches onto a nearby lamp post as the operative delicately lowers both of them to the asphalt ground. 

“Show-off,” Qrow mumbles into Clover’s muscular shoulder as they still stand entangled amidst the street. 

Installing the charges at the planned location and setting them off is practically child’s play. Arthur’s self-proclaimed brilliant idea, initially met with blatant skepticism, was to install weak explosives at select locations of Atlas, that would produce cracks along which the flying city would fracture when it inevitably broke down after colliding with the whale. That way, Atlas would more likely shatter along carefully designed lines, rather than breaking key buildings, hazardous Dust facilities, or tall towers. Their ragtag group had split into sub-teams to set off the different bombs across the streets following Arthur and Pietro’s careful plan, and Qrow and Clover’s unit was the second to detonate theirs next to the new greenhouse to avoid the breakdown of the glass building itself or the numerous pipes connected to it upon dropping the city on the whale.

“Done here,” Clover announces through comms while still holding his partner’s hand in the wake of the small explosion. 

“Done here,” Ren echoes a beat later, his and Nora’s location on Qrow’s Scroll indicating they were somewhere behind the Academy tower. 

“Ready for drop-off,” Ruby claims as she and Weiss hover by the Schnee Manor. 

“On our way, we’ll be at Atlas in twenty minutes,” Jaune announces, while another muffled female voice chirps excitedly into his Scroll. 

“... Lily?!” Clover calls out, brow furrowing as he attempts to remember what his little sister actually sounded like. 

“Sorry to disturb your virtual reunion, lucky charm,” Qrow intervenes, tugging on the former operative’s hand while still checking everyone’s coordinates on his Scroll, “but we should get going.”

“Okay.”

The first thing that strikes them when they step into the greenhouse are the scents. The air is saturated with humidity, carrying rich, earthy smells of fertile dirt, punctuated with colourful notes of fresh flowers, of ripening fruit, of exotic spices. Everything, from left to right, from top to bottom, is in apple pie order, perfectly stacked and aligned, perfectly symmetrical to receive the exact same amount of water, nutrients, and artificial lighting. The low whirring of ventilators at the far side of the room distributes the Fire Dust-warmed air through the space, controlling the atmosphere to accelerate plant growth.

Sighing heavily, the General sets down his shovel to wipe the sweat beading the skin and metal of his brow. 

“Clover? Qrow? What are you doing here?”

The two knew from the signal of his Scroll that James would be there. Yet… they didn’t expect to find him like this. With dirt up his gloved hands and usually pristine white sleeves, with the smell of fertilisers reeking off his uniform, with a faint sheen of perspiration over his tired traits. They’d expected to find a tyrant holding a young boy at gunpoint, and they’d found… a simple gardener? An exhausted, dirty, determined gardener?

“Do I know you?” a tired female voice asks from a far corner of the greenhouse, and Qrow turns to see Willow Schnee, whom he only recognises from portraits hanging around her manor, her glassy eyes staring blankly as she focuses on her glyphs around multiple rows of crops. 

Ironwood just abducted her only son and attempted to bargain his life against his android’s return… what is she doing here by his side? 

“Do we know her?” Clover whispers confusedly into the shifter’s ear. 

“Clover, how are you feeling?” the headmaster immediately prompts at the sight of his former right-hand man’s distress. “Where’s the Winter Maiden?”

Qrow’s heart swells suddenly, strangely - is that pride at seeing James stopping himself in his hostage-taking plan, letting the boy go, and mending his own relationship with the boy’s mother? At seeing James bringing himself back from the dark path he had almost followed, dragging himself back up from his downfall with the sheer strength of his metal nails, saving himself or whatever was left of his heart, or his humanity where no one else could, not even Willow or Winter, not even Clover, not even Qrow? Is that unbounded admiration, unbounded love for this man whose strength hadn’t faltered despite his brokenness, because of his brokenness, for this man who recollected the pieces of himself to keep moving on, only nudged by unlikely circumstances and a little help from friends? 

“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad that you asked after lucky charm first,” the scythe wielder drawls, setting one hand at his hip, “but that you still think we’re here to hand you Penny on a silver platter, Jimmy.”

The harmless jibe gives Clover just enough time to recollect himself. Not completely, but enough to formulate a coherent answer. 

“For the first question… I don’t really know. But at least the second is easier to answer. Penny is in the Vault with Winter and Pietro, they’re moving Atlas over to the whale so they can drop the city onto the whale as you planned.”

“Winter? She’s here? She’s safe?” Willow shrieks immediately, all her glyphs flickering off in unison at the shock. 

“She is, and neither of you is going anywhere,” Qrow snarls in retort, his fingers hovering over the hilt of Harbinger.

“Why?”

“Because we don’t want you to mess up with our plans,” Clover offers tentatively, “and because there’s a lot more Grimm in the vicinity of the whale, and if we want to stand our ground and defend the greenhouse and the rest of Atlas, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

“We’ll help,” Willow announces loud and clear, and much to the shapeshifter’s surprise, the General simply nods and draws his weapon, aligning with his former team leader’s decision.

As if on cue, a loud shriek distracts them overhead, and only then do they notice the Griffins pecking at the fragile glass roof. Each collision of sharp beaks and deadly talons against the translucent surface draws a blood-curdling sound, threatening to drop the whole structure over their heads and their new crops. 

“Weeping tree?” James turns to Willow, an inquisitive light in his royal blue eyes. 

“Weeping tree,” she confirms, and both of them rush outside with Qrow and Clover at their heels, brandishing Harbinger and Kingfisher as they run. 

“You two, stay back,” the General orders, while his female teammate already dashes ahead of them, her heels clicking frantically on the floor.

“Why? What’s going on?” Clover shouts. 

“Their team attack,” the shapeshifter grunts in reply, aiming at smaller Nevermores with his shotgun. 

“What’s it about?”

“No idea.”

With a small shrug, Qrow converts his weapon into sword form, intently watching as Ironwood closes his eyes. 

Nothing happens. 

And reopens them. 

Nothing happens. 

And then, the Grimm flock to him. 

Ignoring the greenhouse, ignoring the rest of Atlas, ignoring Willow, Clover, or Qrow. They flock, attracted to him like moths to the light, like flies to the darkness, as if to a beacon of negative emotions broadcasting so deafeningly loudly that everything else sounds silent by comparison. They flock, ineluctably, drawn in by his Semblance, far too numerous for him to contend with. They flock, until the General finds himself completely covered in a giant mass of black beating wings, of sharp slashing claws, of strong gnawing jaws…

“James!” Clover cries out, rushing forward while throwing the hook of his weapon.

And Qrow follows suit, because he can’t let Ironwood do that. Can’t let James call all the Grimm to himself with his Semblance, for even his Semblance embraces his self-sacrificial ways, can’t let him sacrifice himself so everyone else may live. Can’t let him sacrifice himself as a last attempt to redemption, even if he’d done many things wrong, sacrificing himself wouldn’t make it right, cannot not make things right should not make things right will not make things right will never make so many wrongs right, and James doesn’t have the right to do that, to leave all those who care for him behind…

Clover and Qrow sprint forward - but running into a large glyph stops them dead in their tracks. And looking ahead, they witness a dozen identical silvery spinning platforms elicited by Willow’s Semblance around the now utterly circled mass of dark monsters. The Schnee lifts her hands like a conductor, and an army Phantomatic Nevermores, Beowolves, Manticores close in toward their targets, leaving no escape to the Grimm. No escape but the slightest of openings skyward, just above the mass of battling black and white creatures.

Gunshots echo amongst the mass of growls, shrieks, cries… and a fraction of a second later, Ironwood emerges through the narrow opening, firing his Gravity Dust gun to propel himself over the Grimm. Rebounding off a glyph Willow produced to catch him, he executes a perfect mid-air pirouette to catch a Beowulf’s paw that dares swipe at him and throws the monster at full force into its comrades, causing multiple Grimm to disintegrate into sooty clouds. All that before landing on one knee before Qrow and Clover, his metal fist cracking the cement upon meeting the floor.

The General takes a few seconds to catch his breath, and the former Ace Op offers a hand to help him up, but Qrow already senses his hair standing on end at the nape of his neck…

“Willow, duck!” he yells, grateful that his Semblance warned him of the incoming winged Beringel that almost grazed the top of her hair, hurling at top speed toward them. 

She summons a winged primate of her own, but the newcomer gigantic monster swats it away like a fly before pinning it down to the curb and obliterating it with a single pound of its immense fists. Wings spanning larger than the Atlesian boulevard they stand in spread behind the triumphant Beringel’s back, the beast’s growl alone causing the glass house to tremble. 

“Clover, we must protect the greenhouse,” James seethes between gritted teeth, causing his ex-subordinate to flick his lucky pin on Qrow’s lapel.

The shapeshifter blinks, and he can almost feel the luck seep through his skin like electric tingles, spread through his body… and not stopping. Clover’s Semblance radiates like a warm blanket, covering the greenhouse, the street and its buildings with a sense of invulnerability, and they know nothing can really go wrong as long as Clover’s luck remains with them…

“Can I really do that?” the former operative asks in disbelief as his widened eyes glow an intense shade of green. “Have I done that before?”

“No idea,” Qrow shrugs, very mindful of Clover’s hand still resting on his chest by the clover pin proudly glittering on his shirt. “But my Semblance can do something simil-”

“Could use some help here!” The General interrupts, holding off one of the towering monster’s fists with the full strength of his metal body, his steel arm trembling under the strain as the Beringel’s push causes his boots to dig deep destructive furrows into the ground. 

Kingfisher’s hook lashes out in response, the fishing line wrapping itself around the headmaster’s waist and dragging him out of the way. At the sudden loss of Ironwood’s force pushing back, the giant Grimm topples to the side, fortunately damaging little more than a lone lamp post folded under its weight. Teal eyes still glowering dangerously, Clover reels in his weapon and throws James toward the creature’s wings, allowing the General’s metal hand to grasp onto a key articulation and shoot Due Process into the weak spot, shedding several human-sized black feathers that impale deeply into the floor as they drop. 

The monster’s shriek of pure pain creates a shockwave through the whole street, and Willow staggers on her high heels while still focusing on subduing the mass of agglutinated Grimm circled by her summons. But without losing time, Qrow runs toward James and the Beringel, deploying Harbinger into its scythe form. Grabbing the pole end, Ironwood’s powerful metal arm tosses the shapeshifter into the air, and by the time he’s reached the top of his graceful parabola, Qrow reared his arm back, throwing Harbinger like a javelin into the monster’s exposed neck. The great war scythe stabs the creature’s thick hide, but it does little more than create a small dent of red against the white and black. 

A small dent, just enough for James, Clover, and Qrow to slam the monster’s own feathers into the wound, reducing the building-sized Beringel into little more than a column of scattering black particles. Panting with exertion, Clover sways on his legs as the veil of good fortune hovering over the whole street drops and his Aura shatters, prompting the headmaster to dash ahead and catch him before he can hurt himself falling. 

“C’mon Jimmy,” Qrow admonishes while Clover tries to mutter something, blinking confusedly within the safety of Ironwood’s arms. “Lucky charm here is still recovering from his injuries, and you had to ask him to go all out with his Semblance? It could’ve killed him! You know damn well that last time I tried to do that I blacked out for -”

But he stops, for neither James nor Clover are listening. 

Instead, they’re kissing. 

Ironwood dropped all pretense of steadying the former operative on his feet, instead pinning him into the nearest lamp post to better eat his face off. And from the sight of Clover’s desperately shut eyelids and his strong hands tangling into the General’s soft black hair and lush beard, the younger man must be responding rather passionately. And all Qrow can do is stare in utter shock confusion disbelief because it hurts... 

He thought they liked him... hoped they’d love him back… and it hurts...

But okay maybe he’s been a selfish asshole for pursuing them both for loving them both when they all were at such a low point and he should be happy that they’re happy together and Qrow’s a total bisexual disaster as always…

And it hurts but he’s happy…

He’s happy for them, and these two gorgeous men making out is incredibly hot but Qrow shouldn’t be thinking that shouldn’t project his own fantasies onto their kiss... 

Clover’s still recovering from his injury, they’re all still recovering…

Amidst his brain completely short-circuiting, the shapeshifter barely notices Willow winking at him before a glyph gently nudges him toward the two kissing men, and strong arms wrap around him, keeping him safely in place in their almost overbearing warmth. 

“Is this okay?” Clover murmurs, lips ghosting over the shell of Qrow’s ear, and that’s enough to send shivers down his spine, especially when James’s expert thumbs are busy tracing circles against his hip bones.

“Yeah,” the shifter swallows thickly, prompting Clover to drop feather-light kisses all the way from the lobe of Qrow’s ear to the corner of his lips. 

Qrow’s mind is ablaze, all his senses saturated by Clover’s lips suddenly on his, claiming him, adoring him. By the General’s stable hands massaging his abdomen, warming up that precise spot scarred by Tyrian’s stinger and momentarily dissolving Qrow’s pain, momentarily filling him with sensations and love and more sensations, too many sensations. By Ironwood’s warm mouth nibbling at his collarbone, his beard deliciously tickling the sensitive skin. The scythe-wielder chuckles into the kiss at that, his contagious laughter propagating to Clover who regretfully breaks their kiss to giggle alongside Qrow, gently resting their foreheads together. 

“Sorry we scared you, we didn’t mean to,” Clover tells Qrow, and the shapeshifter only wants to forgive him, to believe him, to trust him and love him, to trust and love both of them...

Ironwood shuffles around in their three-way hug so that the ex-Ace Op can stand in the middle, between the two older men who immediately proceed to kiss over his shoulder. They wouldn’t be able to tell who initiated the contact, they’ve both been wanting this for so long, but they weren’t okay enough for it. And there’s still not okay, and somehow they’re going to make that okay. The kiss is gentle and tentative, and Qrow can feel how wary, how broken, how lonely James feels beneath the surface, and that’s okay. The raw emotions wash through Qrow as surely as a lulling tide every time their lips meet, again and again, and the shifter knows he can’t unbreak James, can’t fully trust him or forgive him, at least not now, but he can love James. Or at least, try to. 

They’re in love. Yet there’s rifts within them, rifts between them. And being in love won’t make them unbreak, won’t make them agree, won’t fix everything, but at least they have each other. And that’s okay too. 

Except that…

“Ahem,” Willow clears her throat, forcing the three men to break from their heated embrace. 

Gasping for air, Clover staggers on his feet again, still feeling the aftermath of heavy Semblance usage, but fortunately he’s in the right place for both Qrow and James to support him. 

“I thought we had the world to save, gentlemen?” she wonders, crossing her arms elegantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... finally! :D


	23. Like birds of a feather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon is that Qrow’s multitasking skills are off the roof. Hope you enjoy :)  
> Warnings: things get a *little* bit heated, but nothing explicit, mentions of depression, swearing

whos-a-good-boi: Are you sure that’s a priority?

Kind of in a middle of a Grimm fight here

CookieUncle13: absolute priority

He’s my best friend’s dog, and Jimmy’s #1 stress relief

And keeping Jimmy calm so he doesn’t go mental is kind of a top priority here

Capt777: If you could just send me your door code, I’ll go get Zwei from your quarters. 

stretchyman: Zwei is actually in the shared Ace Op rec room.

Capt777: Someone remind me of the door code for that? 

TIMBERRR: How could you forget the code? YOU chose the code lucky plant!

stretchyman: memory loss.

TIMBERRR: OH RIGHT I FORGOT

SOrry ahahaha

LightningHare: ok that’s kinda funny

CookieUncle13: Lemme guess

7777, amirite?

LightningHare: 7778 actually

But lucky guess ;)

CookieUncle13: K imma go get the dog now.

Good luck out there, brb

whos-a-good-boi: Did Qrow just say good luck?

stretchyman: evidently. 

TIMBERRR: Clover’s rubbing off on all of us :D

stretchyman: evidently.

* * *

“Sorry not sorry,” Qrow teases softly, his brow furrowed in concentration. “But you’re getting a manicure.”

“Should I be offended or honoured that you’re using the repair toolkit from Harbinger to fix the joint pressure on my prosthetic hand?” James frowns a little, metal fingers twitching within the shapeshifter’s grasp. 

“Honoured for sure,” Clover groans before going back to texting on his Scroll, a small smile never leaving his lips.

“Can it not wait?” the General sighs. “I need both of my hands to write important messages to the Council and the military and the Academy...”

“You’ve just been poisoned, you should relax,” Qrow admonishes. “Besides, it’s cute when you try to text with your nose.”

“Are you insinuating I’m not _always_ cute?” Ironwood protests with a pout.

Shifting uncomfortably on the sofa that’s a little too small for three adult men, Clover finally gives up and rests his head onto James’s lap, earning a nice view of the General scrunching up his nose repeatedly against the surface of his Scroll to try to form coherent messages. It may not be very efficient, and he may want to drop that old-fashioned habit of signing all his texts, but it is rather adorable, just as Qrow said. 

All three of them, snugly reclined on the sofa, are in fact not in Ironwood’s quarters, but Clover’s, since at least those have an intact door. The General had called for the door to his own apartment to be replaced after Willow and Vine wrecked it, but in times of Atlas soon to drop into the whale and out of the sky, somewhat unsurprisingly door-fixing services aren’t the most high priority.

“Did you punch Tyrian or something?” the shapeshifter mutters, picking up a smaller screwdriver to extract the ruined parts. “Some of the screws in your knuckles are kinda...”

“Screwed up?” Clover offers distractedly, at which the two older men give a low chortle. 

“Maybe,” the headmaster responds flatly. “Or maybe that’s the effect of me ripping off his stinger with my bare hands.”

“In a creepy way, that’s weirdly hot actually,” Qrow mumbles into Ironwood’s ear, dropping a soft peck against his cheek. 

Too enthralled by the priceless sight of how flustered the General looks, Clover struggles to stifle a giggle by burying his face into James’s chiselled abs. And somehow resists the near-overwhelming temptation to drop all pretense that he's a mature adult and blow a raspberry against Ironwood’s stomach. 

He wonders how long it’s been since he’s last had a silly thought like that since almost dying, since remembering. It feels… different. New. In a good way.

“Why am I feeling like you two are trying to distract me from my duty?” James grumbles as Qrow’s lips work insistently on mapping the side of his bearded jaw, just as his hands fumble with the screws and screwdrivers because Qrow’s a multitasker like that.

“Because you need to rest and it’s not always up to you to save the world, James,” Clover replies in his softest tone, revelling in the warmth of Jimmy’s lap. “Unless you want to grab Atlas yourself and throw it at the whale yourself and then go catch all the pieces of the city when they fall with your bare hands.”

“I am the General of the Atlesian army, I should be overseeing all these operations.”

“Pietro is qualified for that, he’s been steering Atlas through the sky to the whale using the Staff right now with Penny’s help, and it’s been a smooth ride aside from a few Grimm we’ve dealt with,” Clover explains.

“Welcome to Air Atlas, this is your captain Qrow Branwen speaking,” the shifter quips back, “the sky is clear aside from a giant whale and a few Beringels. We will be reaching our destination within an hour, the outside temperature is ass-freezing degrees. To your left you can see a very interesting cumulus formation with a little flock of Nevermores.”

“Then why aren’t we outside dealing with those Grimm? Any manicures can’t wait…?” the General says.

“Because you running around outside like that, exhausting yourself while still recovering from poisoning, is the perfect recipe for you making stupid decisions in the heat of the moment and screwing everything up again,” Qrow admits, and Clover’s glad he did so that the ex-Ace Op doesn’t have to put it so bluntly.

“... You two don’t trust me.”

The edge of Ironwood’s voice is ragged, and he looks hurt. Clover doesn’t know when he’s last seen that wounded light in the General’s eyes, but he looks hurt. His cologne smells so very nice, his eyes are so very blue, but they look hurt. 

“This isn’t what I meant, Jimmy...” the scythe-wielder stammers. “But given the evidence we’ve had recently, it’d be safer to...”

“Are you two using my feelings for you to keep me out of the action so I won’t spoil the plans you and Pietro and Winter and I don’t know who made for Atlas? For my Kingdom?” the headmaster hisses.

“No, we’re here because we care about you,” Clover answers immediately, surprising even himself. “Because your feelings are reciprocated… at least by me, personally.”

Clover feels vulnerable, even more so than when he was in a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages around his chest.

“Look, Jimmy,” the shifter continues, “we all know that you wouldn’t have made such piss-poor decisions under pressure if you had people who cared around you to listen to you and advise you, to force you to relax and take care of yourself so you don’t lose your mind, and more importantly, to cuddle and pamper you.”

“So now let us cuddle and pamper you, while Pietro and Penny are busy saving the world,” Clover adds, setting aside his Scroll to pull apart the buttons of James’s uniform and drop a small, chaste kiss on his stomach where warm skin meets cool metal.

The General inhales sharply, wordlessly, and that sound alone nearly sends Clover utterly unravelling, but fortunately Qrow has the countenance to softly prompt:

“That good?”

The question is barely whispered, barely exhaled, but James responds with a nod, and Qrow tilts his head to pull him into a slow, languid kiss. Keenly aware of the two older men locking lips above his head, the former operative kisses all the way up Ironwood’s torso, meticulous lips mapping the line between ragged scars and smooth steel, between robotic perfection and human… _humanity_ , or whatever broken, beautiful remnants are left of it, all the way until his tongue lavishes the General’s adam’s apple, and the sound of Qrow and James moaning in their kiss is music to his ears. 

The next thing Clover feels is Qrow’s feathery hair caressing his cheek, and a fraction of a second later, Ironwood’s lips are on Clover’s. The angle is awkward, but the ex-Ace Op can taste the slightest hint of Qrow’s tongue on Jimmy’s lips, and that only eggs him further, makes him want more just so he can feel something. Fill his empty head of lost memories with something, fill the void darkness of his depression with something, crash his lips against James’s so he can feel something, so much something… So many sensations fill his mind at once, he barely realises when the headmaster gasps and suddenly pulls away. 

“Wait… please...” Jimmy pants, dark blue eyes pleading just as much as adoring. 

“Too much?” Clover supplies, frowning in worry.

“No… I mean, yes, but… I wish it weren’t too much. I wish I could just trust you two with… everything.”

Hurt blue eyes still clearly disbelieve that anyone could still love him, after all he’s done, after the embargo, after martial law, after shooting Oscar, after considering shooting Whitley… Hurt blue eyes still disbelieve James is still worthy of a second chance, still worthy of trust, of love… and that, that sight alone, hurts.

“The three of us should talk,” the ex-Ace Op points out. 

“Now?” Qrow asks.

“Maybe later, if that’s fine with both of you,” James exhales.

“Don’t worry, we can take it slower,” Qrow says soothingly, waving with a screwdriver in one hand and a handful of nuts and bolts in the other, while Clover wonders how he’s still holding onto all that, his multitasking skills must be out of this world. “We can go back to the manicure.”

“I would greatly appreciate it if you put my hand back together after taking it apart, Qrow,” the General points out.

“Let me see if I have spares for these springs and screws in my Harbinger kit. They don’t look too good currently.”

“All my spares are in the nightstand on the right of the bed, second drawer from top in the bottom left corner, under the first-aid kit,” Ironwood explains patiently.

“I’ll go get it,” Clover volunteers, pouncing upright just to remember his Aura was broken less than an hour ago and he shouldn’t be getting up so fast. 

A wave of dizziness washes through him, causing him to stumble straight into Qrow’s awaiting arms. 

“You look like you should lie down,” the shifter scolds. “Both of you look like you should lie down and rest. I’ll fetch the spare parts, and if you try to go anywhere I’ll personally go get Zwei and put him on top of you so you can’t get up and have to stay down.”

“Yes, sir!” Clover says with a sloppy mock salute while cuddling back onto Ironwood’s lap, much to the older man’s satisfaction as James runs oblivious fingers through his mess of brunette hair. 

Neither Clover nor Jimmy have anything to protest to Qrow’s plan - they’re all top huntsmen and Atlas’s best, but the weight of a small fluffy corgi rendering them completely and utterly unable to get up is undeniably flawless logic. 

Fortunately, the crimson-eyed huntsman loses no time in finding the puppy, still fast asleep in his bed where they’d left him since picking him up from the Ace Op rec room. 

Unfortunately, before he can place Zwei onto the chest of the former operative, whose head currently rests atop the General’s knees, a low whirring sound stops him dead in his tracks, as a dark red portal swirls out of thin air into existence.

* * *

_“Have you finally come to kill me off this time?” Qrow sighs, staring at his sister who just appeared on Ironwood’s balcony, red-rimmed crimson eyes as icy as ever._

_He’s too tired to find anything more snarky to say, he overextended his Semblance way past its usual levels the night before as James was about to shoot him, and now he just woke and really needs a cup of coffee._

_“If that were the case, you’d already be dead, baby brother,” she snaps back immediately._

_“Funny that, because you keep saying you want me dead, but if you had the balls to do what you said you could just come murder me in my sleep.”_

_“And watch you in bed all cuddled up with Ozpin’s puppet tin man? Gross.”_

_“That was one time, sis. There were plenty of other nights when we travelled from Mistral to Argus.”_

_“The only reason I didn’t kill you then was that Yang was nearby and I didn’t want to have to kill her too if she found me murdering you. Wasting one portal is okay, but wasting two is a bit much.”_

_She inspects her fingernails with great concentration._

_“Then care to tell me why you’re here? I don’t believe it’s just to say hi to your baby brother.”_

_She crosses her arms, one hand resting against her weapon’s hilt. Her eyes stare down at her feet, the red scarf in her feathery hair billowing in the wind._

_“He’s back,” she whispers after instants of silence._

_“The pronoun game won’t work with me, sis. Who’s back?”_

_“I’m sure you can figure it out.”_

_He can. They know each other too well, like birds of a feather._

_“... Ozpin,” he realises, wide-eyed. “You sensed it, right? And you were able to portal to him?”_

_She nods, still refusing to meet his gaze._

_“You still have a portal to Oz? After all this time?”_

_“Cut the sap, baby bro. He’s with me now, I’m taking good care of him, and if you let anyone know I told you, I’ll gladly slit his throat.”_

_“I’d understand. He can get pretty annoying.”_

_“He told me you punched him when you found out.”_

_“He told you? About Salem?”_

_“He... I...” she trails off, her voice choking ever so slightly, but of course her sibling picks it up._

_“You needed someone to talk to, so you went to bug your hopeless brother who’s just had one of his only friends almost murdered before his eyes and his other friend try to shoot him point blank in the face. But of course you wouldn’t tell me that, you’re too proud to say you need help, sis.”_

_“You’re such a drama queen.”_

_His sister was no better back in their STRQ days, but that’s too much of a touchy topic for both of them to bring up any specific examples just now._

_“Funny how you wouldn’t take care of your own daughter, but picked up a random pipsqueak with Oz in his brain because that’ll give you control and power. Salem will figure out eventually and come for the boy, you know that?”_

_“She has bigger fish to fry right now. Like the big sky city you’re staying in these days. Hopefully I’ll get all the information I need from Oz before Salem remembers he exists.”_

_“Why do I feel like you’re not telling me everything? Like you didn’t portal here and risk getting caught by the General just to tell me about the return of your high school crush?”_

_“Of_ our _high school crush, Qrow.”_

_“Whatever, don’t try to avoid the question.”_

_“Do you remember the burying rituals in our tribe?”_

_“Don’t try answering my question with another question either.”_

_“Did you remember, or did you forget everything about your blood family and your roots?”_

_He does remember._

_He does remember that in the tribe, the dead, just like the living, didn’t stay for long in one place, in one campment._

_He does remember that rather than digging graves into the red ground, they incinerated the bodies in tall pyres, and then scattered the ashes into the wind, to fly into the forest wherever the breezes would take them._

_He does remember specks of black, specks of grey on the red earth, the red sand, the red staining his palms, his clothes, his hair, even his parched lips, his fingernails._

_He does remember the elders saying the ashes would feed the earth, feed the trees, the trees that’d provide shelter for the bandits to hide in, fruit for nourishment, wood for fences, tools, tents, woods for more fires, more pyres._

_He does remember the cycle, circling ceaselessly since the dawn of time, the cycle that’d continue long after he and Raven are dead and gone, little more than ashes in the wind and earth._

_He does remember, but he doesn’t need to tell her. She already knows. Like birds of a feather, they know each other too well._

_“My condolences for her death, Rae. We’ll catch Cinder, and we’ll make her pay for everything she did, I swear.”_

_“Cinder’s alive? She won’t remain alive for long then… not if I get to her before you do.”_

_“What was her name?”_

_“Vernal.”_

_They stay in silence for long seconds, as the harsh Atlesian winds whistle by._

_“There’s something else, isn’t there, Rae?”_

_“Another reason why I haven’t killed you yet is that Tai wanted a service from you.”_

_“I’m all ears.”_

_“He’s taking the Signal kids on a school trip, and he looked for someone to take care of Zwei. Only he couldn’t send you that dog through the mail this time, with the embargo.”_

_“And why me?”_

_Probably because he looks terrible and like he needs a hug, but Raven would rather watch him fall accidentally onto her sword ten times then give him a hug, because hugs are for the weak, but she still feels bad so she prefers giving him a dog who’ll give him hugs. But of course she’d never admit to that._

_“Tai told me Zwei licked you, so you’re his.”_

_“Zwei licks everyone, Rae.”_

_“He hasn’t licked me,” she retorts, her glare dripping with disgust._

_“Because you taste awful, I can smell it from here. Even that dog has standards.”_

_“So, as Zwei’s personal slave, are you gonna keep him?”_

_“Whatever. If I accept, will you leave already?”_

_Scowling wordlessly, she slashes a wide arc with her sword, and out of the newly formed portal, a short-legged black and white mop of hair comes running out ecstatically, losing no time to rub its fluffy body onto Qrow’s legs._

_“Ha! You still have a portal to that dog! You still do care for him! I knew it! Tai owes me twenty.”_

_But before she can watch him gloat in his victory, all he sees of her is a wine-red swirl of a portal closing, leaving Qrow alone with Zwei on the cold balcony._

* * *

“What is it this time, Rae? Because even if you’ve finally made up your mind and geared up your ass to kill me, there’s three of us and one of you, not even counting Zwei who’s always been team STRQ’s biggest powerhouse,” the scythe-wielder says, defiance evident in his tone.

Raven’s jaded eyes scan past the three men and the corgi on the sofa before she speaks up.

“An injured Atlesian military man with bandages all over his chest, a General whose still functioning half body has recently been poisoned and looks like it needs a good night’s sleep, and my pathetic baby brother who likes to pretend that he’s all sobered up now. What should I be afraid of?”

“Zwei licking you,” Qrow smirks without missing a beat. 

“Qrow has been clear for one month and three weeks now,” James cuts in, to most everyone’s surprise as no one else really kept count so carefully. 

“I suppose a straightforward soldier like you doesn’t have enough subtlety in him to lie. I was always wondering, the day I met my brother’s partner, what they’d tell me they found in him. But now I see the two of you, and I really have no idea what _both_ of you find in him. Seems like Qrow’s finally lucked out, for once.”

“He’s courageous, selfless, smart, he has a great sense of humour and he bakes great cookies,” Clover starts. 

“And he’s caring to a fault, hopeful, patient, an excellent teacher, and one of the strongest fighters I’ve ever met,” the General continues.

“That’s all really nice, but that doesn’t answer what on Remnant is my sister doing here,” the shapeshifter cuts in, the shade of red tinting his cheeks almost matching his cape.

“And yet neither of your two boyfriends have taught you to take a compliment,” she sneers, tapping her fingers against the sheath of her sword. 

“See? Even your sister is telling you,” Clover whispers in Qrow’s direction, waving his non-dog-holding hand expansively.

“I’ve come to pick up Zwei, since Tai came back from his school trip.”

“Who is this Tai, and are they nice to dogs?” the ex-operative murmurs into Jimmy’s ear. 

“Professor Taiyang Xiao Long, and unfortunately I have no idea,” the headmaster replies.

“Are you expecting us to trust you of all people with that corgi?” Clover calls out, holding the dog up against his chest like a mother bear protecting her child. 

“Why not? Tai did entrust me with that dog. If that makes you feel better, I can exchange him against someone else.”

“Are we back to human exchanges now?” James speaks shakily, rubbing the bridge of his nose. 

“Dog exchanges,” Qrow replies, seemingly knowing more than he’s letting on. “I want to see Tai, to make sure he agrees with this and he’s really free to take Zwei back now.”

“At this time? He must be teaching,” Raven dismisses.

“What tells me you’re not lying?” her brother tilts his head in distrust.

Sighing heavily, she cuts a portal open with her blade, and at the other end of the whirling portal, the blackboard and wooden desks of a Signal classroom materialise, just as the blonde teacher and two dozen shocked students stare back blankly at the tribeswoman, sword in hand, and the three men huddled on the sofa with a corgi whose wet pink tongue sticks out to the side. 

“See? He’s teaching,” the female shifter says.

Qrow smirks at the thought they haven’t embarrassed Tai this much in a while, at least not since Qrow got his revenge and swapped all of Tai’s pants for Summer’s dresses for a week - team STRQ? You must mean team SQiRT, right? - much to the amusement of the bird-named siblings at the time.

“What’s so funny, Qrow?” Clover wonders as the scythe-wielder struggles to contain his laughter. 

“If you’re done here,” Raven says, “I’m okay with returning him to you before you even hand me the dog. That’ll just be good riddance.”

Closing her portal to the classroom, she slices a new one, and slowly a recognisable freckled boy in a worn green coat updated with bandit-style sashes and belts walks out. 

“Oscar?” James speaks, looking just as terrified as the kid staring back at him, alternately looking at the man who shot him, the one who punched him, the dumbfounded former operative and the smiling and drooling corgi in his arms.

“Is that… headmaster Ozpin?” Clover echoes, blinking confusedly.

“Hopefully not,” Oscar answers, before whispering as if to himself, “and no, I don’t need you to take over. May I remind you that last time you were there and Qrow was there, Qrow punched me because of you… Okay, maybe you weren’t in charge and it wasn’t your fault when the General shot me, but still, he wouldn’t have been so mad weren’t it for his loyalty to your crazy plan to raise Atlas through the atmosphere… No, Ozpin, I can handle this on my own, trust me...”

“You know what? You can keep that dog,” Raven orders, crossing her arms as she’s getting tired of all their shenanigans, determined to leave as soon as she gets what she wants. “If Tai thinks he can rope me in to be his personal dog delivery service, he’s dead-ass wrong. I don’t have all day to watch your gay shenanigans.”

* * *

AceQueen: News from the watchtower - Salem has noticed us, and the whale is now pursuing Atlas!

R3dLikeR0ses: why can’t things ever go the easy way

XxSnowPeaXx: because Salem isn’t stupid you dolt <3

R3dLikeR0ses: You know what I’m thinking?

CrazyCatLady: FREEZERBURN?!?!

Capt777: We could raise Atlas through the clouds to hide it from her

R3dLikeR0ses: my thoughts exactly

Great minds think alike ;)

moderator: on it

COMBATREADY: ON IT!!!

DrVolts: On it.

BananaHead: but the whale will just follow us into the clouds…?

zenmaster: And we’ll lose our advantage because our sensors can’t perceive the whale so well through the clouds, but she can still sense the negative emotions from Atlas

Copycat: We need a decoy.

BananaHead: Great idea Blake!

Copycat: That’s… literally my Semblance.

BananaHead: but where are we gonna get a decoy for the whole city of Atlas??

_Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official added I <3IceCream to the chat. _

ThunderThighs: Neo can type?!?!

AceQueen: She’s mute, not illiterate, you dolt.

<3

zenmaster: does the <3 stand for an ice cream cone

BananaHead: shush you guys we’re trying to save the world here

@I<3IceCream I know you and I started off on the wrong foot, but

if I boosted your semblance, could you make a projection of Atlas dropping just below the clouds, so that the whale can fly in that direction and we can drop the real city onto the whale?

Just so that Salem’s whale doesn’t swallow Atlas whole and all of us with it

I<3IceCream: can do a small one :3

COMBATREADY: How would that work?

Capt777: if you made it closer to the whale, with the perspective effects, that could work

ImDaGrimmReapah: alright I’ll fly you closer to the whale

@ Greensleeves & After April, are you with me to cloak the ship?

Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official: Granny, this is how to tag @Greensleeves @After_April

After_April: aye

Greensleeves: yass ma’am

COMBATREADY: GOOD LUCK OUT THERE LADIES!

Capt777: what she said

* * *

“Everything all right, Clover?” James asks a little too loudly, peering through the bathroom door. 

A little too loudly, because the brunette flinches and drops his Scroll in surprise.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. You left the door unlocked, and I was wondering if you needed any help with your bandages.”

“Yeah… I need to change them. I can do it alone mostly, but I wouldn’t mind some help...”

“That’s good to hear.”

Good to hear because Clover’s willing to open up to others and ask for help now, even if for insignificant things, and that counts. Good to hear because James feels trusted, even with that part of Clover’s body he abhors the most, and that makes him feel loved, feel invincible, more than winning any battle or defeating any monster ever could. 

“Care to tell me what the texting was about?”

“Nothing you should be worrying too much about. It’s all solved, we’re just about to face a little turbulence aboard Air Atlas.”

James’s eyes intently trace the pattern of those bandages, carefully committing them to memory so he can wrap new ones following the same motif, so that he can focus on the way the fabric lines weave around Clover’s sculptural chest rather than on the large scar that makes the ex-Captain so uncomfortable.

“Not too tight?”

“Nah, feels good to me.”

“I haven’t seen you flinch like that for many years,” the General notes, changing the topic understandingly. “You used to be sensitive to loud noises when you first joined the Academy, but I thought it got better over time.”

“Must be a consequence of rooming with Elm, I guess,” Clover shrugs.

“Elm’s voice and actions are loud, but usually not followed by strongly negative outcomes.”

“Whereas at home in Argus, I’m pretty sure every time a loud noise was heard it usually meant something really bad was going to happen. I’m sorry, the mental state I’m in right now really brings out the worst in me again.”

Ironwood remembers Clover apologising to Qrow and the kids after they were first captured, before Elm pushed him aside and started shouting at Ruby and shaking her. Clover had flinched slightly, but nowhere near as badly as now.

“You don’t have to be sorry for recovering from your injuries, or for being you.” James states. “How you managed to survive and remain yourself, no matter how much your body doesn’t look and doesn’t feel the same, that is admirable. And if I didn’t love you before, now I...”

He trails off, unable to complete the sentence, the plea, the promise - it’s all too sudden, too fast, and he hasn’t earned the right to say those words yet, no matter how much he wants to. A single good action on letting Whitley go, a single team-up fight, a single make-out session doesn’t grant immediate, complete redemption, and James still has work ahead of him to earn the right to those words. They still all have a lot of work ahead of them.

“Why does that sound familiar?” Clover asks sincerely, ignoring the end of the sentence for now, because the silence speaks tenfold louder than words.

“Because you told me the same thing when I stayed months in hospital after losing half my body.”

“But that last bit was all yours, right?”

“Yes.”

That stable certainty in Ironwood’s blunt tone elicits a brief chuckle out of Clover, and the sudden movements messes up the bandaging a bit, forcing the General to stop and adjust his handiwork while his patient takes in the meticulous digits rummaging against his skin.

“I’m sure I must have felt the same about you back in the day already,” Clover says.

“You had your own string of relationships back then.”

“Only to make you jealous.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain.”

“I’m not exactly opposed to sharing, as is evident.”

“Who’d have thought? General James Ironwood, most possessive man in Remnant, not opposed to sharing.”

The ex-operative turns around and nuzzles into Jimmy’s neck, peppering delicate kisses like so many melting snowflakes, before the General shoots him a stern glance to force him to stay still so he can finish changing the bandages.

“Only if it means more hands to cuddle and pamper me, as you two say.”

“How selfish of you,” Clover pouts.

“How selfish of me.”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe your feelings are only selfish. If not… you’d never have remembered what her favourite flowers were.”

Closing his eyes, Clover focuses on the soft caress of James’s clockwork-precise hands, on the feather-light touches of fabric, metal, skin, as he wraps the bandages firmly yet gently around the younger man’s torso. That’s here, now, and fascinating enough to dull away the pain and grief from the past.

“I’ve been wondering why anemones,” Ironwood says. “They’re so fragile. They’d never survive outside in the cold harsh Argus weather.”

“I’d never taken you for the flower-loving type of gay.”

The General chuckles slightly as he finishes his methodical work, stepping back to verify everything is in order as it should be.

“I’ve been brushing up on my botany lately with the greenhouse project,” James justifies. “Gardening is quite good against stress.”

“Anemones are fragile, but they’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

Anemones are beautiful, but they wouldn’t survive the winter. Fruit and vegetables are delectable, but they wouldn’t survive in Atlas outside of the greenhouse. And yet… while animals just feed off of what they find, while Grimm survive and thrive on negative emotions alone… people spend so much time and effort caring for fragile plants, building greenhouses, weeding gardens, pruning trees, just in hope that the seeds they buried will yield beautiful flowers and delicious fruit some day. Maybe it’s ridiculous, futile, fruitless, but that’s what makes us different from the Grimm, different from Salem, maybe that’s what makes us human.

“Yes. Yes they are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anemones are my mother’s favourites. 
> 
> (I really can't remember where the ice cream cone thing was from, likely somewhere online, I just hope I didn't accidentally steal it from another fic, sorry if that's the case, I can't recall right now so maybe I'm stressing out for no reason, my brain hurts even though that's physiologically impossible)
> 
> There should be an Archmagus update soon, I’m just working through the logistics of a particular passage and right now I just can’t stop writing Help… help me (sorry not sorry)… or not (sorry not sorry)… please stay safe xx


	24. 404

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 404 error - title not found, lol. No but seriously I had no idea what the title was gonna be, until I took the title for another chapter and slapped it on this one.  
> Sorry for so much texting this chapter. Like what even is this fic any more. Anyway, have some bird shenanigans and a calm chapter before Atlas falls and all shit goes down again.  
> Warnings: PTSD, Tyrian is mentioned, allergies, swearing

_It’s been a while since he’s been back here._

_The sky over Kuroyuri is devoid of any sunlight, of any warmth, colourless clouds looming menacingly, gray on gray on white._

_It’s at once too dark, and too bright._

_Qrow knows what’s going to happen next. He’s had this nightmare so many times already._

_But it’s been a while since he’s last had this one nightmare. He thought he’d gotten rid of it. That it was finally all over, now that Tyrian was killed, wiped off the face of Remnant by James. That’d Qrow’s finally turned a new leaf of his life._

_And yet, here he is, trapped in this nightmare, back in Kuroyuri, knowing what’ll happen next. Knowing the beam will fall, knowing he’ll be there just in time to save Ruby, knowing the pain that will lacerate his abdomen, too sharp at first for him to notice..._

_Until the adrenaline and the shock subside and the venom starts to spread, tearing his body apart, tearing his mind apart from the inside..._

_Real life is uncertain, misfortune messing things up differently every time. But nightmares, they’re the same, over and over again._

_He thought he’d moved on. But just as he thought he’d finally moved forward, that memory comes back to haunt him._

_The trauma isn’t going away. It’s never going away. Even killing Tyrian wasn’t enough to make it go away. Even nested in the safety of his lovers’ arms, the nightmares are never going away._

_The air around him is thick like water and he can’t move, can’t run away, can’t even fly away no matter how frantically his wings may be beating, before sharp pain claws at his gut, and colour suddenly bursts into existence as his world turns red._

* * *

Capt777: Help me, what do I do?!?!?

_Capt777 sent a photo_

TIMBERRR: aww

LightningHare: cute.

whos-a-good-boi: <3

Capt777: guys this is serious please help.

stretchyman: Do not squish him.

Capt777: Thanks for the advice, Vine. 

I didn’t know I shouldn’t squish my boyfriend in bed if he turns into a bird in his sleep. 

I truly didn’t know.

stretchyman: The General would know what to do.

Capt777: James is asleep.

I don’t want to wake him

He deserves and needs a good night’s sleep!

LightningHare: True

I’d have said ask his nieces for advice, but it’s 6am right now so only the military is awake

TIMBERRR: @Capt777 you did remember that Qrow can shapeshift right?

Capt777: but usually he does it intentionally, not while sleeping??

What if he can’t shift back???

What if Ozpin turned him into a bird permanently?!?

Stretchyman: Deep breaths, Clover. Deep breaths.

whos-a-good-boi: if I may?

Not that I wanna worry you or anything, but Qrow sometimes loses control of his shapeshifting when he’s having a panic attack or a flashback

Happened once during a mission

TIMBERRR: So maybe he had a nightmare and shifted in his sleep?

Capt777: He’s still fast asleep. But kind of shaking and whimpering and I don’t know if it’s normal for birds or if I should wake him up, or if that’ll scare him to death. I know nothing of bird sleep cycles.

LightningHare: spare us the details on your boyfriend’s sleep will ya?

Capt777: I thought you found it cute

LightningHare: we didn’t know he was SHAKING in his sleep omg that’s creepy

Capt777: the picture is blurry for a reason, Hare

TIMBERRR: it’s blurry because it’s dark af

Capt777: I don’t wanna turn the light on not to wake James,

whos-a-good-boi: OwO

stretchyman: OwO

Put a blanket on him.

Capt777: pardon?

stretchyman: Try putting a blanket on Qrow, it might work.

Capt777: but I don’t want him to suffocate in his bird form. 

stretchyman: You did ask for advice. 

Capt777: thank you, guys...

* * *

Clover finally settles for placing Qrow in his corvid form atop his bandaged chest, drawing the blanket onto both of them so he can make sure the bird’s head stays well outside of the sheets. It’s trickier than it seems, especially since he has to manoeuvre delicately enough not to wake Ironwood, who in addition to being a light sleeper is also a bed hog who unknowingly likes stealing all the blankets to himself.

It doesn’t help that the blankets are too small, because the bed's too small for the three of them, even when Qrow’s in bird form. James mentioned buying Clover a larger bed, but with the whole dropping Atlas on the whale situation going on, furniture orders have been placed on hold, just like the whole fixing Ironwood’s door situation. 

The slight tremor shaking all of the avian body hurts. Not only against the scarred tissue of Clover’s chest, but also because the former soldier doesn’t know how to make it stop. Even if they removed everyone and everything that ever hurt Qrow from the surface of Remnant, even after James eliminated Tyrian, even if some day they managed to defeat Salem, he doesn’t know how to make the nightmares stop.

Eventually though, either the trembling subsides, or Clover’s too used to it and tired to notice, because he feels himself sinking deeply into the mattress as deep slumber reclaims his mind once more.

When he awakens next, the bird has flown away, but Zwei is huddling onto his feet and producing muffled barks in his sleep and fluffing up at each bark, so Clover doesn’t want to get up can’t get up won’t get up will never get up. Instead he checks his Scroll, and a wave of relief washes through him.

***

whos-a-good-boi: @Capt777 don’t worry Qrow’s here at the Academy with me

Capt777: is he still a bird???

_whos-a-good-boi sent a photo_

LightningHare: Not blurry anymore, that’s nice

whos-a-good-boi: he’s been on my shoulder the whole time :)

TIMBERRR: PRETTY BIRB

Capt777: Qrow’s taken, Elm.

TIMBERRR: not like you’re partial to sharing, lucky plant ;)

You know I don’t swing that way anyway

Capt777: NO I DON’T REMEMBER????

DID I KNOW???

I thought you and Vine… oh my gods that’s so embarrassing of me…

stretchyman: Elm means that she isn’t romantically interested in corvids.

whos-a-good-boi: azfqsuyqsfOFQF

* * *

“Operative Amin?”

“Huh?” the rookie looks away from his screen as the young woman, probably a member of team CBLT, gives him a tap on the shoulder. 

“Did you just… do a keysmash on your Scroll?”

“... why do you ask?”

“... because autocorrect?” she waves her hands agitatedly.

“I just saved that particular keysmash to my dictionary,” he mumbles, demonstrating on the device as the bird on his shoulder shoots a sharp glance. “Is everything all right?”

“As much as it can be,” she gestures to the imposing Academy hall, refashioned in crisis times to contribute to the efforts of war, including Dust and weaponry storage. 

In the next hall down the corridor, the wounded following the aerial Grimm attacks on Atlas are tended to because the hospitals are full. In the one after that, those left homeless after Salem’s creatures wrecked their homes are being housed. Yet it feels strangely normal, as if it’s going too fast and the adrenaline is pumping too much for them to realise the gravity of the situation. 

“I filled up the batteries over there, but after a while the Dust in there will revert to snow, is that all right?” she asks. 

Glancing briefly at her file, Marrow sees that Cyan’s transmutation Semblance is indeed temporary, and that any material she transforms eventually turns back to its initial form. 

“When Penny uses the Staff to charge up the batteries, hopefully it’ll help them stay in their current state, at least until we use the Dust to slow down the falling pieces of Atlas that aren’t directly connected to the Staff itself. At least that’s what Pietro said.”

“Hey Marrow! Uncle Qrow!” Ruby salutes sloppily as she drops by to carry the loaded batteries away. 

“Keep up the good work, everyone,” Weiss calls out, lifting the heavy cargo with her glyphs before the red-caped girl grabs her hand, causing both of them to vanish away in a storm of red and white petals. 

“Are we sure we can trust that?”

“I don’t know, do we have a choice? That’s the best we can… achoo!”

“Bless you!” Cyan quickly steps back, worry painted all over her tawny features.

“Sorry… I’m allergic to birds,” he stammers, wiping his nose onto his pristine white sleeve.

The crow on his shoulder caws as if scoffing before taking flight, the sudden flap of wings into the canine Faunus’s face only eliciting more sneezes.

* * *

TIMBERRR: NEXT EPISODE ON BIRD WATCHING

_TIMBERRR sent a photo_

stretchyman: A bird perched on a tree. How poetic.

LightningHare: @TIMBERR good selfie

TIMBERRR: THX <3 <3 <3

_TIMBERRR changed their profile picture_

Capt777: Elm aren’t you on the field fighting Grimm?

TIMBERRR: Yup, your boyfriend just gouged out the eyes of a Beringel with his beak

Capt777: Such a badass even in bird form <3

whos-a-good-boi: ewww

stretchyman: To each their own.

TIMBERRR: Clover always had weird tastes

I mean, RAISINS, amirite?

Capt777: What? Raisins are great?!?

stretchyman: Mood.

TIMBERRR: VINE YOU TRAITOR WHY MUST YOU BETRAY MQSUZAUISFQZIFKJ$%

LightningHare: Teryx just stepped on Elm’s Scroll

stretchyman: Serves her right for typing accusations while on the field.

LightningHare: Qrow just went for it

Can’t see him now

Omg he actually got it

Capt777: Is he OK???

LightningHare: As much as he can be??

Is your emo boyfriend ever OK??

Capt777: Hare I hate you.

LightningHare: <3 <3 <3

* * *

The General’s much-needed deep sleep is finally interrupted by an increasingly insistent rap at the door. 

“Come in,” he announces with a yawn, desperately attempting to render his tousled hair presentable, while the distant whistle of boiling water suggests Clover must be making tea.

“General? Sorry to disturb you, but there’s this Scroll that just came out of the dog, and it says it’s yours?”

Oscar hesitates to walk into the bedroom, his hair unkempt after a night on Clover’s sofa, a still humid Scroll in one hand and a happily yapping corgi under his other arm, cocking a nervous brow as he speaks. An expression of panic remains imprinted all over his face even as he avoids the gaze of the man who’d shot him.

“The dog isn’t mine,” James replies regretfully.

“I meant the Scroll.”

“And what do you mean came out of the dog? Wait, actually, I prefer not to know.”

“The dog was looking kind of congested, so I gave him water and belly rubs.”

Belly rubs. Of course belly rubs are the solution to everything. As well as exactly what Zwei deserves after saving the day.

“You grew up on a farm, so I guess I should trust what you’re doing with animals,” the headmaster says hesitantly.

“I don’t know about the Scroll though… I washed it and put it in rice for a bit.”

“Is it still functional?”

“It’s… flickering… I’m not sure.”

“Have you tried turning it off and back on?” Clover intervenes, bringing a tray with a steaming teapot and three matching cups.

“I… um… no.”

The brunette sets down the tray into the General’s lap before grabbing the phone and switching it off and back on. Of course, just his luck, it seems to operate just fine.

“Looks good now, you might just need to re-enter all your login details.”

“Then perhaps this is a good time for me to reset all my security systems that require my biometric identification. Last time I tried to override my apartment door lock it required my fingerprints, which are not exactly available any more.”

“I thought we told you to relax, not to work on boring administrative stuff?” Clover teases fondly, pouring a cup of tea for his former boss. “Let me take care of that.”

Sitting down next to James on the bed, the former operative peers over the Scroll, taking the opportunity to lean onto the older man’s human side and wrap him into a hug. But before he can get working on the General’s device, his own Scroll beeps, causing him to nearly knock over the tea. The scalding beverage would have poured onto both of them had Ironwood’s metal hand not steadied the tray. 

“Sorry,” Clover mumbles, “duty calls. Saving the world, I mean.”

“You have this constantly active group chat about saving Atlas and Mantle, but you aren’t even including me in it?” James wonders, nuzzling into the ex-Ace Op’s neck. 

“I could ask the others if that’s okay with them… but seeing that Neo and Dr Watts are both in there, I doubt they’ll oppose your presence that much.”

“Arthur? He’s in a massive chat group about saving Atlas from Salem?”

“Robyn took him hostage in Mantle initially, I think he must have been intelligent enough to understand that Atlas would sooner or later fall over his head if he didn’t agree to help. Now he’s helping Pietro and Penny steer the city through the sky and activate the fail safes if the Staff’s not enough to slow down its fall.”

“I remember those fail safes, we were already talking about them back in our team WILW days,” the headmaster echoes. 

“Team WILW? Willow Schnee, you, Watts, and who… wait, give me a second...” 

Clover trails off, already busy answering something doubtlessly urgent from the save-the-world chat. Even thinking back, James isn’t sure Clover ever met Lazlo, other than seeing him briefly at boring official events and stuffy upper-class balls. That’s a shame - Laz was the best of them. Not just because of his famous last name, his bright blonde hair, azure eyes and even features, not even because of his dazzling Semblance. But because while Laz died young from incurable illness, time, as surely as gravity, had eventually brought disgrace upon all three surviving members of team WILW. 

All the remain teammates now comprise an alcoholic married to Jacques Gelée of all people, a rogue scientist who’d served as Salem’s henchman for most of his life, and James ‘am I more machine than human’ Ironwood himself, blamed for the embargo, blamed for martial law, rightfully blamed for shooting a kid point blank and threatening to shoot another one, who’d have done so and definitively gone down in history weren’t it for the timely intervention of said dog-hating rapscallion, well-meaning friends, and Zwei the goodest boi in the history of Remnant.

“Is there anything I can help with?” Oscar calls out from the door in his most unsure tone. 

“Give that puppy more belly rubs,” James orders absent-mindedly. 

“I’m sure you can help James with technology too,” Clover adds without looking away from his Scroll. “Young people these days are better with that than we’ll ever be.”

“As the General said, I grew up on a farm… but I’ll see what I can do,” the farm hand shrugs, carefully scratching the space between Zwei’s much to the dog’s glee.

As it turns out, Oscar has that nervous patience that’s crucial to work with technology. Not resetting that Scrolls and security systems takes as long as watching wheat grow, but instruction manuals are lengthy and convoluted, and the fine print isn’t clement to Ironwood’s aging eyes. Moreover, Oscar doesn’t assume anything. He doesn’t assume he knows how to fix things, press on random buttons and break everything. Instead, he reads the instructions carefully, doubting himself at every turn and doubting that the General working alongside him doesn’t actually want him dead. 

“Listen, Oscar, I know it’s nowhere near enough, but I apologise for what happened in the Vault. I acted on instinct, and that led me nowhere. Still, that’s no excuse for what I did.”

The thud the manual makes when dropping from Oscar’s hands is soft, low like a heartbeat. The silence that follows is only interspersed by the caws of distant birds.

“You’re right. It’s not enough. But now I wonder if you wouldn’t have felt remorse, in the case it actually led you somewhere, to something you wanted. You know you finally achieved it, right? That by shooting me, you finally jogged him loose, and he came back, right?”

Ozpin. Of course the kid’s talking about Ozpin. Ironic how James eventually managed to cause him to return, and now he doesn’t even care about Ozpin or his ideas any more. They’ve set their own plans into motion now, carved their own path, and it’s too late to go back. It’s too late for doubts and concerns, for regrets and remorse, perhaps even too late for forgiveness.

“You know, I never thought I’d have the chance to apologise for what I did,” the General declares. “Even if I know it’d take a lot more for you to forgive me, if you’ll ever be willing to forgive me.”

“You’ll have to thank Ozpin for keeping me alive… keeping _us_ alive so you can get to apologise,” the farm boy amends. “And Raven too, I guess. I could never have survived alone in that Grimm-infested mine in the wilderness alone weren’t it for her.”

“I doubt Raven was charitable to you without an ulterior motive. What did she want from Oz?”

“Information. Information about Salem and the Grimm, but above all, about the Relics and the way they function.”

Knowledge - of course, knowledge is power, and power is control. And there is nothing more Tribe Leader Raven Branwen wants than control. James can relate. 

“How much of that information did she obtain?”

“She tried to get me to remember all those facts, but with neither me nor Ozpin cooperating, it wasn’t easy. So she’d train me and fight me every day, until I got tired and he had to take over.”

“Hmm. She and I had not so dissimilar methods then, only that sly bird had more success.”

“But once he’s taken over, she’d give him… me… that blue flower tea… it’s a blue flower that only grows in those parts of Anima. I don’t remember how much we told her, but when I’d wake up afterwards my throat was always parched from talking so much.”

A weight heaves off James’s chest as he considers he didn’t go that far, would never go as far as doing something as inhumane as drugging a child… or would he? He had drugged a child’s mother, his past teammate. Said teammate already spent her days and nights in an alcohol-addled state, but that was hardly a sufficient excuse…

“Do you think Ozpin told her that Salem can’t be defeated?”

The General could have asked if Oscar was okay - but that’s futile, the answer is obviously no, and there’s not much they can do about it. He could have asked why the kids didn’t tell him in the first place about Salem - but he already heard the answer, even though it never fully made sense to him. No, Ironwood is a practical man, and the useful questions must always come first.

“I don’t know, and I doubt she cares that much. Raven and her tribe have accepted that the battle against Salem is one they can’t win, so they make it not their own fight. On the contrary, she blames people like you, people like Oz and Lionheart, for thinking that it’s a war that can be won, and training kids to send them to the battlefield like pigs for slaughter.”

Zwei comes to curl up on Oscar’s lap, and of course that’s what the boy needs, the headmaster reflects. Of course dog cuddles is the best he can offer this kid right now, and it’s not enough, it’s nowhere near enough compared to what he’s gone through, the shooting, the drugging… but that’s better than nothing, and that’s something, and that helps.

“And what do you think?” the General asks.

The farm hand seems genuinely shocked that Ironwood is asking his opinion. Even Zwei’s ears stand straight on his head as he senses Oscar tensing up. Understandably: shooting someone and _then_ asking what they think is rather… unconventional.

“Me? This has been my fight since Ozpin came into my head, but not because he forced me. No, it was because I decided it would be my fight too. He gave me a chance, and I took it.”

“He must’ve lied to you by omission to convince you to join his side, and he would’ve forced you if you didn’t accept.”

“But he gave me a chance to matter, by doing something that no one else...”

“That no one else could do… I know, don’t you think I haven’t heard the same recruitment speech? Ozpin’s oldest soul grew up in a time without Semblances, he got really excited about this unique talent in every person that no one else has kind of thing.”

“And you, what do you think?” Oscar echoes, leaving the General at loss for words for short seconds. 

“I think even if she can’t be killed, it doesn’t mean that we’re allowed to give up protecting humanity, protecting those we love. Maybe raising Atlas was foolish, because we’d run out of Dust eventually even if we had food and water, which we essentially have now, while the pool of darkness might be bottomless and Salem may have no limit to produce Grimm, that don’t need to eat or drink to keep moving on, only growing stronger when fed with negative emotions. But even if there’s a slightest chance that her pool of darkness resources on that whale are limited to spawn more Grimm or heal the whale, the slightest chance that the whale can be defeated, we should take that chance. It may not win us the war, it may not even win us the battle, but if there’s the slightest chance to give Mantle and Atlas time to breathe and live, an instant of calm before the next storm hits, it’s worth risking everything we have for that respite.”

“It reminds me of a fairytale,” the kid whispers, flicking through the instruction book. “My aunt said it was my dad’s favourite in his last years. It had to do with two kingfishers on the coast of Argus.”

“The kingfishers myth, yes. The days of restful sea between two harsh winter storms where these birds come to nest. Believe it or not, Clover’s mother told me about that one. Alcyone Ebi. A fantastic woman, just like her son. I would do anything, give anything I have, risk anything I can’t have just to have a lucky break like that, for Atlas and Mantle, for humanity...”

“Even shooting a child?”

“If you’d asked me many years before, I’d have said I wouldn’t cross that line. That’s why I fired people like Arthur, who’d wanted to advance human life at the expense of our own humanity. Now that I’ve already crossed it, almost twice, I don’t really know. But you’re right, the line must be drawn somewhere, if we want to remain different from Salem, to be better to humanity than Salem.”

“You know, I keep wondering if you thought I’d have survived, that night in the Vault. If you thought my Aura could absorb the hit, or if you’d miscalculated the distance with the ledge in your pain and painkiller-addled state. I wondered if you only wanted to knock me out to shut me up, and that was well within the lines you drew for yourself, or if you really wanted my death.”

“I keep wondering that too.”

Even in his nightmares, he keeps wondering that. He remembers this one time where he discussed the matter with Qrow after one of those nightmares. 

“I’m sure Qrow’s sorry for punching you, too,” he adds.

“To be fair, Ozpin kind of had it coming, I’d have done the same as Qrow in his place. But I still can’t decide if I’d have shot me if I were in your shoes. Probably not?”

The headmaster doesn’t know how to respond to that, until an unrelated thought caresses his mind.

“If you survived the fall from the ledge, I infer you’ve gained access to his green bubble ability?” the General thinks aloud. 

“Why? Because you want to be assured you won’t kill me if you throw another tantrum and shoot me again?”

Ironwood’s metal fingers unbutton one of his holsters, and the kid _shrieks_ , projecting an emerald spherical shield that knocks the dog off his lap, rolling off until it finds Jimmy’s feet and starts to chew on the man’s socks. 

“I meant that as a joke,” James assures. 

“With all due respect,” the farm boy says while his eyes scream ‘please don’t shoot me’, “you have a terrible sense of humour, sir.”

* * *

_Private messages from CookieUncle13 to Capt777_

CookieUncle13: sorry I kinda vanished this morning

Had a rough night, need some space

Should be back by lunchtime

Was also gonna message Jimmy but he mentioned his Scroll was eaten??

Capt777: Better now? Nightmares?

CookieUncle13: yea

Capt777: Are you back to your human form and hiding somewhere in Atlas to text, or are you still a bird and typing on your Scroll with your beak?

CookieUncle13: yes.

I mean maybe ;)

Capt777: C’mon Qrow I was worried for you!

If you need to talk, I’m here for you, as you’ve always been for me.

But if you need alone time that’s fine too! James and I can wait.

James has been working on his Scroll since it got out of the dog.

CookieUncle13: wtf lol

Capt777: Oscar is helping him with the technology, he wants to update all his security systems so they don’t ask for his fingerprints, or lack thereof, any more. 

He wants to replace them with voice recognition. 

At least he’s still got fully functional vocal cords, although I do know a couple of ways to render him speechless ;)

CookieUncle13: that a challenge, lucky charm?

Capt777: If you win I’ll make you crab soup <3

CookieUncle13: but your so competitive

Capt777: *you’re :)

CookieUncle13: try typing with beak

Capt777: Are you really typing with your beak??

CookieUncle13: maybe ;)

Capt777: or are you messing with me?

CookieUncle13: _ <forwarded message > _maybe ;)

Why don’t you go mess with our boy jimmy 

while I give you a headstart

Capt777: so the challenge is really on?!

CookieUncle13: any good excuse for you to throw yourself at him

Capt777: what do you mean?

CookieUncle13: I’ve seen the way you’ve been at it non-stop since you two smooched you on the field

You don’t think it’s all going too fast?

You’re still recovering both physically and mentally, and Jimmy has been going through a really rough patch lately

Like he would’ve been ready to kill a kid if it weren’t for random circumstances, Zwei, and the Ace Ops saving the day

It was a close call, it’s a lot to unpack, and we all need more time

Capt777: OK I can’t believe you’re typing all that with your beak

CookieUncle13: Don’t try avoiding the topic

Jimmy’s not stupid, he knows you’re making out with him to distract him with your hotness so he won’t do something stupid and shoot children and put Remnant at risk

Capt777: but… weren’t you also making out with him? And giving him a manicure?

CookieUncle13: I was, and now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have. 

So taking a break and taking things a little slower now.

But you throwing yourself at him like that? I’m worried for you. 

Are you sure there’s not something more?

Capt777: Well, it helps me feel normal, like I’m not a depressed, injured, amnesiac useless person?

CookieUncle13: You feel empty and you need to fill the numbness with something

So you throw yourself at everyone just for the sensations

Been there, done that

In my long relapse years, I mean

Threw myself at Jimmy even though we hardly knew how to communicate back then, at Glyn, even Oz

And random innkeepers and random people while on missions

Alcohol helps numb the pain, but then you need to distract yourself from the numbness

I think I can relate to how you feel, and each time I only felt more worthless and filthy afterwards

Capt777: I’m so sorry to hear

Glad you’re better now, wish you could realise just how strong you are after all you’ve been through!

But this isn’t the same, right?

You, James, and I are agreeing to be in a relationship, not random strangers, right?

CookieUncle13: too early to call it that?

On the other hand, there’s a war and the city’s gonna crash through a giant whale and into the ground real soon, so now may be our last chance I guess?

Capt777: I don’t know. Let’s talk over lunch. 

Thanks for the talk (beak texting?), I think we both needed that.

But especially me ;)

I’ve heard communication is important in this type of relationship.

CookieUncle13: I should know, the rest of my team was into something like this

But my sister’s like me, not great at communicating, so in the end it didn’t go too well

Capt777: you’re not like here, and doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try!

Come back for lunch, I’m making crab soup.

CookieUncle13: Try not to flood the kitchen this time

Capt777: I did that twice back in the day right??

CookieUncle13: that’s what jimmy said

Capt777: You know what they say. Third time’s a charm ;)

CookeUncle13: shut up and cook.

* * *

“Six of hearts, be still my beating heart, Manticore, Jacques Schnee is an asshole,” James overhears when finally completing his update of all the security systems. 

The voice from Clover’s living room sounds like Fiona Thyme, the spokesperson of Robyn’s campaign, and the General steps into the room just in time to see the sheep Faunus perform a backflip before his eyes.

“Pass,” Oscar says miserably, tapping the table lightly. “General, would you like to join the game?”

Calling him by his rank while playing a game of cards couldn’t be more out of place, but the poor kid’s learnt his lesson the hard way as to how not to get shot, and a pang of guilt hits the headmaster’s half-robotic chest. After he could deal with the biometric identification on his own, he’d left the boy to go play cards with Clover and their guests - there are surprisingly few helpful things huntsmen and huntresses, aside from those with select Semblances and skills, can do in these trying times to prepare the fall of Atlas, and the rest of them need to remain occupied with _something_.

“Penalty,” May Marigold announces while granting him a card and an apologetic smile, “for speaking out of turn.”

“Queen of hearts, be still my beating heart, I’m the Queen of the Castle, Jacques Schnee is an asshole,” Clover announces in turn, before proceeding to execute his best macarena. 

“Incomplete,” May judges, handing him a new card. 

“Damn, I forgot after I’m the Queen of -”

“Speaking out of turn,” she throws him another card, “and swearing,” yet another card which he gracefully accepts from his previous teammate.

“Point of order, do you realise how hard it is to play this after memory loss?” he groans while sitting back down on the sofa next to the other players. “I have to figure out the rules all over again, all those we made up throughout the years. End of point of order.”

“Point of order. Cloves is such a drama queen. End of point of order,” Robyn retorts sharply.

Just as the General thought, the backflip must have been a rule Clover added back in the day, after one of his undoubtedly many wins.

“I want Jacques’s head on a spike,” Robyn continues, after putting down a Queen of spades, “I’m the Queen of the Castle, get down you dirty rascals, YASS QUEEN!”

And while she produces a macarena of her own, Joanna gets ready to set down an Ace of spades.

“The Ace Ops are the best Huntsmen, I want Jacques’s head on a spike,” she speaks with rather uneven enthusiasm, only to be playfully flicked a card in the face. 

“Not your turn,” her blue-haired teammate berates pitilessly, just as Fiona adds a nine of spades to the pile. 

“Deathstalker, I want Jacques’s head on a spike...” she looks around, wondering if she’s left anything out...

“You forgot to backflip,” James supplies, leaning in the doorframe. 

“Point of order,” Clover calls out again. “James, do you want to join? You seem like you know the rules. Not that we’d explain them to you anyway.”

“I’ll have you know that I wasn’t half bad at playing Mao back then,” the headmaster claims. 

“Yeah, but only because the new rules you made up were terrible and no one liked them,” Robyn cuts in, recounting the days where he’d play with his classes as a teacher in the last day of Academy years. 

“Is that... an analogy to my politics?” he responds, rubbing his beard with a nervous human hand.

“I think Robyn’s being too harsh,” Clover amends. “James has his own sense of humour when you get to know him.”

“You see?” the General mouths in Oscar’s direction, to which the kid only mumbles something along the line of “useless gays”, and Ironwood infers he must have picked up some snarky manners during his time with Raven and the tribe.

“C’mon, take a seat with us,” Fiona nods encouragingly, prompting James to sit next to Clover, circle an arm around the younger man’s waist, and press a gentle kiss atop his messy brown hair while Robyn stares down at her cards like they’re the most fascinating thing in all of Remnant. 

“What did it take for you two to finally get together, after all those years of hungry staring?” May wonders. “The General not being Clover’s teacher or boss any more, or Ironwood shooting a kid, or Clover losing his memories?”

“It’s complicated...” James starts. 

“Know what? I don’t really want to know,” the Marigold huntress says, before customarily stating, “end of point of order.”

Oscar puts a two of spades on top of the pile and calls out:

“I want Jacques’ head on a spike, Zwei is best boy,” and even violent threats sound out of place in his youthful mouth.

“Two of diamonds, diamonds are a Schnee’s best friends, Zwei is best boy, Mao,” May shouts triumphantly. “New rule: whenever a club comes on, we have to say Clover is such-”

A tremor shakes the room, interrupting all of them and scattering the pile of cards onto the table.

“Is that it? Is Atlas falling?” Fiona asks, catching the cards into her palm pocket before they can get lost or further mixed up.

As if on cue, everyone’s Scrolls beep synchronously. 

* * *

COMBATREADY: Sorry for the perturbation, the weak spots of the whale are not yet well-identified enough for me to take a proper shot now!

zenmaster: By taking a shot you mean drop the whole city right?

COMBATREADY: Especially since I only have one shot at that!

stretchyman: precisely.

moderator: Penny is the one controlling the Staff and therefore the trajectory of Atlas. We’re working on updating her scanners so she can identify which points of the whale’s anatomy are most vulnerable and vital.

* * *

“I thought Grimm were uniformly red inside, so you can just cut their head off or something?” Oscar asks, raising a few eyebrows around the room as many don’t realise he never had formal huntsman training. 

“For a Grimm of that size,” Clover explains, “there will be pockets of liquid that can be used either to breed more smaller Grimm, or for the whale to regenerate itself. 

“If we don’t strike in one of those pockets, the Grimm will just be able to heal, quasi-instantly.” James adds. “And as Penny said, we only have one shot, so we have to make sure where these internal pockets are.”

“Are Penny’s sensors not equipped with scanners like medical ones that can detect changes in density?” Joanna wonders. 

“Grimm anatomy is soft and ever-flowing and different, just as Oscar said,” the General retorts. “Arthur used to be an expert on that.”

* * *

Capt777: James said @DrVolts is an expert on Grimm anatomy?

DrVolts: Why thank you

@COMBATREADY I think I can update your scanners to be able to identify the whale’s weak points without changing any of the hardware

Just plug this hard drive in whenever you’re ready. 

COMBATREADY: DON’T WORRY, I’M ALWAYS READY!

R3dLikeR0ses: YAY PENNY YOU CAN DO IT!!!!

XxSnowPeaXx: XOXOXOX

_COMBATREADY is typing..._

CookieUncle13: PENNY WAIT!!!!!!

COMBATREADY: thank you, done! 

_COMBATREADY has left the chat_

_R3dLikeR0ses is typing…_

_R3dLikeR0ses, Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official, XxSnowPeaXx, CookieUncle13, Bananahead, and Capt777 and are typing…_

_Incoming voice call from moderator:_

“This is Pietro, Arthur just used the hard drive to hack into Penny and got her to remove the Staff from the Vault! Atlas is entering freefall, and Penny’s flying on her way to the whale to give the Staff to Sa-”

A sharp ultrasound echoes, before a single message is displayed on all of their Scrolls.

_404 Error: How-To-Save-Atlas-2.0-new-NEW-LATEST-new2 cannot be found. This server no longer exists._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mao isn’t my idea and I saw it first in Flamesong’s Threading the Needle of Destiny and SoulStealer1987’s Albatross. Go read their stuff, it’s amazing. I’ve played a grand total of once in my life and actually started playing mid-game while other players had started hours ago (yah I’m crazy like that), so let me know in the comments if there are any inaccuracies.  
> Something important with respect to the fic: there aren’t that many chapters of this fic left, my guess is between 3 and 6 chapters. Also hopefully they’ll resume their game of Mao since Fiona pocketed all the cards before they could lose them ;) The fic won’t continue for long after Atlas has fallen out of the sky for different reasons. Basically it follows a possible series of events for Volume 8 or Volumes 8-9 from the point of view of certain characters. I won’t resolve the plot of the whole show or all the character arcs for sure, just the plot of this Atlas arc, kinda… you’ll see. Stay tuned, and above all, stay safe xx


	25. Like a penny for your thoughts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit’s going down, guys  
> … but at least there’s zwei  
> Warnings: everything going to shit, classism, mentions of riots, brief mention of the Apathy (I dunno they just freak me out), did I mention everything going to shit

Atlas must not fall. 

For now, everything in Atlas is floating. Fleetingly. Frozen in time, almost. Everything drifts by slowly as if through water - furniture, cards, fabrics, people - off the cold hard floors of the sky city, as if escaping gravity’s grasp. Everything drifts by surely, as surely as the city freely plummets through the clouds, devoid of the Staff at its heart that previously kept it afloat. The only ones left grounded are the people of Mantle, scurrying like ants below as they watch the shadow of the floating city widen over their heads, the shadow spreading like slime through grimy streets. 

Atlas cannot fall. 

This cannot be the end. Not yet. For now, everything is weightless, for ephemeral instants, everything only exists in the calm before the storm. Before the end, before the crash. Everything only exists where the kingfishers come to nest, in the respite before winter takes everything away, before the inevitable end, before the brutal collision that will crush Atlas to pieces. Without the power of the Staff, they’re not prepared for that shock. And yet, they must face it. Everything is weightless, and yet the burden on their shoulders has never been greater. 

Atlas does not fall. 

Instead, it staggers to a stop, if only for an instant, for a lucky break, a short pause. 

The Winter Maiden may have taken the Staff from them, and Arthur may have hacked all the systems and taken control of everything, but he couldn’t stop the General’s override, activating all the failsafes at once. It took Ironwood’s retinal scan, his voice command recognition - and then all the Dust-powered reverse thrusters were activated at full intensity, breaking the city’s fall and maintaining it at constant altitude. If only until the Dust runs out. They have minutes, hours at best. 

Everything regains its weight, falling back to the floor within the high spires and shiny towers of Atlas. But not for long. They have hours at best, minutes at worst. 

They have no time to lose. 

“Pietro? Dr. Polendina, do you copy?” James calls out, ears peeled for any words above the static noise at the other end of the line. 

“General? How come you can call me? Wasn’t your Scroll hacked too?”

“I updated my safety systems just now, maybe that’s why my Scroll was spared.”

“Then that’s good news. That means you still have access to the kill switch that can turn Penny off.”

“Yes. That’s what it means.”

Clover, Oscar, and the Happy Huntresses are staring expectantly from their haphazardly tumbled positions on the sofa and chairs of the living room. Until something distracts them, a blur of black and a flash of wings by the window, and Qrow materialises outside the balcony, just in time for Robyn to allow him in. 

“This might be the best shot we have at preventing the Staff from falling into Salem’s hands,” Pietro says. “I cannot take back control of her, not since she willingly took Arthur’s drive into her Aura, and since her Aura, and my Aura, are still on. But I can guide you through the procedure of steps to turn her off. Awaiting your orders, Sir.”

“Penny is like a daughter to you, correct?”

“No. Penny is not like a daughter. She  _ is  _ my daughter, my only daughter.”

“Last time you rebuilt her, you said there may never be another time. Now if I turn her off, and if she falls from here to the tundra, there’ll be no third chance.”

“General, I know what I signed up for when I entered this military programme, when my project was picked. I knew I was making a weapon, a weapon for war. And at war, there’s casualties. I already lost her once, and I’m prepared for the eventuality I might lose her again.”

From Dr. Polendina’s side of the line, his voice resonates weirdly like a broken sob through the vault, the vault that’s cold and empty and barren. 

He says nothing. 

The Happy Huntresses say nothing, either. 

Oscar stirs as if about to speak, perhaps as if Ozpin were about to take control. 

But Qrow shoots him a brief glance, and none of them make any more moves. 

“Awaiting orders, General,” Pietro repeats simply, brokenly. 

James remembers Qrow calling Penny family. 

He remembers Marrow calling Penny a person. 

He remembers Winter seeing Penny as a friend. 

He remembers her mother and the Ace Ops, Clover Ace Op’s, saying they were all friends. 

They weren’t always friends. They weren’t friends before Clover almost lost his life. Before they were somehow Qrow’s Ace Ops, however briefly. Before they were somehow Willow’s Ace Ops, however fleetingly. Before Salem’s siege started, before all hell broke loose, unleashing the flames that forged their bonds as friends, their bonds as family. 

There are certain bonds that once forged, cannot be broken. This is not one of them. One word from James, one penny for his thoughts, and all bonds, all trusts would shatter. 

There are certain trusts that once broken, cannot be mended. Certain bonds that even time cannot heal, after a line that should not be crossed has been crossed. A line beyond which redemption is no longer possible. 

Has James crossed the line? Was it worth it? Was it worth sacrificing his body, his humanity, his everything, to put so many lives on the line to protect the relics from Salem? Is it worth it, every injury, every lost life, every compromise, every nightmare and sleepless night, every dream and aspiration, without one last step, one last sacrifice, that of a military experiment with barely a soul of her own, to make sure the Staff doesn’t fall into Salem’s hands?

The others reminded James of so many things he thought he’d forgotten, like a kaleidoscope of emotions inside that hasn’t seen the sunlight for so many years, gone dark and cold under the hardened steel carcass he’s slowly grown into. But now the decision weighs on him, as the General of the Atlesian army, the most advanced military of all of Remnant, and him alone. 

“Is there any other way?” James asks.

* * *

The Academy corridors should be empty. Yet, they’re not. Voices, shouts, footsteps, coughs echo down the halls. Cyan’s boots clatter down the tiled floors as she reaches the makeshift hospital hall, as soon as gravity reclaims its right over the corridors of Atlas. She’s not sure where the rest of team CBLT is, her Scroll stopped working for some reason, not that it’s surprising given the recent fall, but she must check out why the place hasn’t been evacuated yet. In the hospital, the loss of gravity due to the city’s freefall caused some commotion, knocking some patients off their mattresses and scattering assorted medical supplies over the floors. Muttering and cursing, as nurses agitatedly move across the room to fix the mess. 

“Why are the injured and the homeless last to evacuate?” a voice calls out from a corner of the hall. “I thought everyone in Atlas should have been evacuated by now.”

Cyan vaguely recognises the young woman who just spoke: her hands are gripping the hilt of her warhammer so strongly her fingers are blanching, her turquoise eyes brimming with indignation as she shakes her head vigorously, tousled red hair barely brushing her shoulders. A gangly blonde boy with a sword and shield stands next to her. She must be Nora Valkyrie, one of the newly minted huntresses from Beacon, one of the young heroes the General used to trust so closely he would assign them on missions with the Ace Ops themselves. Those kids are an inspiration, a model for the newest generation of Academy students to follow. If there’ll be a newest generation, that is. If that generation doesn’t perish with the fall of Atlas.

“This is the standard evacuation protocol, Miss Valkyrie,” a tall man whom Cyan identifies as Operative Zeki replies, walking down the corridor as he and his teammate, Operatives Ederne and Amin, must be returning from escorting the evacuation transports down to Mantle. “The injured take longer to be transported, and we don’t want any hiccups that may come up with their transportation to delay the evacuation of the healthy that are quicker and easier to move.”

“What about the homeless down the next hall? Is that your excuse to evacuate the upperclassmen first?”

“About that,” Operative Bree cuts in, racing down the hall and leaving a trail of sparks behind, “the upperclassmen transport that just landed in Mantle was attacked.”

“By the Grimm?” Vine asks.

“No, by the people of Mantle.”

“Should we suspend the evacuation? What are our orders?”

Harriet shrugs.

“Without working Scrolls, we don’t have orders.” 

“Then shouldn’t we do something about that?” Marrow says. “The people in Mantle are already suffering from Grimm raids and still recovering from the damage done by Cinder’s fires, not to mention the long-term poverty imposed by the embargo. And last time Mantle was the one under attack, Atlas didn’t evacuate even half of Mantle before retracting its troops to protect the Staff. Are you surprised that there’d be protests when the richest Atlesians are evacuated to Mantle?”

“We can’t just evacuate people to the tundra,” Hare protests, “they’d die within minutes.”

“Not with active Aura,” the blonde boy next to Nora points out, and it takes an instant for Cyan to remember his name as huntsman Jaune Arc.

“Not everyone has active Aura,” Vine sighs. “And activating Auras is costly, the Ace Ops and you two alone, Mr Arc and Miss Valkyrie, do not have anywhere near sufficient Aura to activate everyone here, let alone the hundreds of civilians that were already evacuated. We’d have done it long ago if we could, but unfortunately this isn’t a task we can do.”

“No, but I can help,” Cyan blurts out as everyone turns to the young huntress in training with astonished eyes. 

“I mean, I’m one of those who can help activate Auras,” she amends, feeling a blush creep to her cheeks, “and I’m sure I’m not the only one, and we’re more than you think we are. I know that’s still not much, but that can make a difference.”

She takes a deep breath before raising her voice to ensure the crowds filling the halls can hear her. 

“Who among you can activate Auras?” she calls out. 

Patients shuffle in their beds, nurses’ latex gloves ruffle as they’re ripped off, allowing tired fingers to rub the dark bags beneath the medical personnel’s eyes, but no one answers. No one answers, and Cyan can’t yet believe it. Her ears are heating in embarrassment, her lips quivering is indignation. She thought everyone wanted to save the world, everyone grew up with fairytales of huntsmen and huntresses who protect those who can’t protect themselves. But apparently not in the ivory towers of Atlas. Or not in times of crisis where staying alive on one’s two feet seems to matter more than protecting others. Not until Jaune comes to stand next to Cyan. 

“I know some of you got hurt in the Grimm attacks on Atlas, I know some of you lost their homes,” he shouts. “I know some of you suffered both, and I know some of you are already working hard tending to the injured. And in a way, it’s our fault. If we hadn’t moved Atlas to drop it onto the Grimm whale, that wouldn’t have happened.”

“But we did it to defeat Salem,” Nora adds. “We did it so that she may leave Atlas and Mantle alone, so that the next generation, so that the young and the children among us, and the children soon to be born may grow in a world without fear, at least for a time.”

“Right, we know we’re asking a lot out of you,” Marrow comments, “but right now if we want a chance for most of Atlas to survive down there after evacuation, we need your help. We humbly ask for your help. In a strange way, even though I wasn’t born privileged, I’ve been so grateful for Atlas, for the Academy and the military, without which I wouldn’t be who I am today. And I’m sure many of you can say the same. But it’ll all go to waste if every civilian in Atlas we evacuate is crushed in a mob or frozen in the tundra when they land. Because Atlas will fall, its citizens will be no more, and there won’t be an Atlas left. To avoid that, we need your help.”

A young woman, some scrawny, exhausted-looking nurse swallowed by her oversized lab coat steps up hesitantly. 

“I don’t have that much Aura left,” she stammers, “but I think I can help.”

“That’s something I can deal with,” Jaune smiles. 

And activating his Semblance, he sends a boost of silvery light rippling through her, visibly replenishing her energy levels. 

Now some see her treatment as a reward for her selflessness, see her behaviour as an example. Now some feel ashamed not to have been the first to volunteer in this competitive Atlas. Not all, but some, and that’s better than nothing. 

“I’ve never activated Aura myself,” a child with tarnished garments chimes in, “but I’ve seen it done once or twice.”

They can’t tell if his grime-covered clothes are from the debris of his home falling apart, or if he’s been on the streets for longer, but through the torn rags they can discern the bright reptilian scales covering the neck of the Faunus kid.

“No worries, I’ve witnessed it about as many times,” Huntsman Arc replies. “I’ll do it with… you out there,” he waves to a middle-aged woman with a small bandaged scratch on her arm. “And then you can do it with him out there, who can do it with her out there, who can do it with them over there. It’s not that long to do, someone I... loved dearly showed me a nursery rhyme of sorts to make it easier.”

He falters slightly at that, and Marrow murmurs to him. 

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I… hope so.”

“Then let’s start,” Vine decides, reaching out with his namesake appendages so he can touch multiple people simultaneously. “We don’t have all day, we should all get cracking.”

“Wait up,” Elm calls out. “Not that I mind helping, but are we going to leave all these people in the tundra afterwards? Or to the mobs, so it may take them a little longer to get crushed?”

She turns to Harriet, who taps her foot nervously, deep in thought.

Carefully stepping to the scaled Faunus boy’s side, Cyan pulls apart a shred of his tattered sleeve, earning a grunt in protest. Before she uses her Semblance, turning the ruined fabric into a shard of pure fire Dust, glistening in the kid’s palm. 

“Not if we give them things to carry to Mantle with them. Bits of Dust like this, or whatever… I don’t know. Those might be not a lot, nothing compared to how much Atlas has taken from Mantle, but that’s probably the best we can do.”

That, and hope that the best still exists in people. That the light still shines under the shadow of the whale, under the shadow of falling Atlas, after the embargo, after martial law, after all the time Salem’s siege already lasted. That the spark still resides in them, the spark that reflects in other people’s eyes, whatever their colour, whether or not they can see in the dark, for the spark shines even through the darkest of nights, the mirrored spark that can make all of them recognise they are but one and the same. 

All they can do now is hope that the spark isn’t extinguished already. 

Harriet dashes off at super-speed to collect whatever scraps of Dust and food she can find to fill the airships before they evacuate from Atlas, while her teammates, Jaune, Nora, and Cyan commence their chanting, slowly liberating the shine within each of the souls huddled in the halls. 

Most of them don’t really know if the chant matters, if the rhyme matters, or if only the intention counts. Most of them don’t really know if what they recite is sentimental gibberish, because as they speak with the synchrony of a single man, each of them is a droplet facing the ocean’s immensity, but together they’re a waterfall, cascading into a river that runs its course, unstoppable, indomitable. And all that matters right now is the light that envelops all of their souls inextricably as one.

* * *

“James, securing the fate of humanity, of her friends and family by making sure Salem doesn’t get the relic is what she’d have wanted,” Pietro supplies. “If Arthur’s hacking hadn’t prevented us from communicating with her, that’s what she’d have said.”

“That pipsqueak was going to hand herself in, when you made your announcement to exchange her for the Schnee boy’s life,” Qrow adds. “Even without knowing what you’d do to her. She’s selfless like that.”

The General inhales deeply.

“Then Penny is more human than I can ever be,” he says.

And even if James can’t save himself, even if it’s too late for him, he can still try to save her. To save her, even if it means throwing away all the efforts, the plans, the dreams, the sacrifices they’d made throughout all these years to keep the relics safe from Salem.

“Does that mean you refuse to shut her down, even if it means risking that she’ll hand the staff to Salem?” Penny’s creator asks.

The General has never felt as in control as with Penny watching his back. He chose that project because it reminded him of himself, of that part of himself buried deep beneath the surface, the metal, the cold, the cables, that part that never gives up, like a beating heart. He brought that project to fruition alongside Pietro, crafting a creature that carries the same heart and soul of its creators. In a way, to James, saving Penny is like saving himself. 

In a way, that’s selfish. In a way, that’s like throwing away the fate of Atlas and the Staff just so he can prove to himself, prove to Qrow, Clover, Robyn, Oscar and the rest that he’s still redeemable. In a way, that’s futile, because that’s nowhere near enough to redeem himself, because a single right isn’t enough to undo so many wrongs.

“Yes. I refuse to shut her down.”

But in a way, he knows they agree this is the right course of action. Because that’s why Qrow came to rescue James, that time in the General’s office just after Tyrian had stabbed Clover. Because that’s why Clover, even from his lowest, most unravelled point, called upon the Ace Ops to intervene, to encourage Ironwood to let go of Whitley before it was too late. Because that’s why Qrow and Clover came back, that’s why Oscar stayed after he came back. To remind James that the frailest, most fragile of flowers should be cherished, and no one should be left behind, even the smallest, simplest soul in the face of the fate of Remnant. 

Not to acknowledge that would be to cause all their efforts to go to waste, and about that alone James cares too much to ever allow it. 

“What are your plans, General?” Pietro prompts after an instant, his voice trembling audibly.

“If freeing her from Arthur’s control requires breaking her Aura, then we’ll break her Aura, but keep her alive.”

“If this is your decision, I should warn you that any airships we send in Penny’s direction she can easily destroy, or Arthur can easily hack them once they get within the range of her sensors.”

“Then we’ll have to use more old-fashioned methods.”

A new voice answers from the other end of the line - a younger, female, panting voice.

“General, this is Specialist Schnee. With your permission, I’ll go after her. My summons can get me in range without risking being hacked.”

Winter’s brave. At least, James taught her well in that regard. She knows she has no chance against Penny now that she’s a Maiden, now that Arthur’s puppeting likely means she isn’t holding back. But she’s still willing to try because she thinks she’s the last chance they’ve got. 

“If I may?” Clover steps in so Winter can hear him. “Penny is your friend, and I think we’ll all understand if you don’t want to fight her, and I doubt that would end well.”

“Sounds like you learnt that the hard way, Cloves,” the Specialist snaps back sharply, bitterly. “But you’re right, I don’t know if I’d be able to put my feelings behind and strike her down, even if that’s what I should do. But do we have another choice?”

Even if they don’t, now they must carve their own path. Figure out their own plan, as best as they can, and if that fails, try again until it works.

“I think I have an idea,” Ironwood says. 

“Is that a good sign? Have you been having enough sleep recently? Are you on painkillers?” Robyn prompts, genuine concern in her voice. 

“I know it’s a lot to ask from all of you, after all I’ve done,” James says, “but I’ll need you to trust me, and whether we come out alive or not, I’ll be forever grateful if you do.”

* * *

Arthur is exactly where James thought he would be - of course, they know each other too well. Watts had puppeted Penny to fly him away from the Vault and drop him in another location unknown from Pietro. But of course, James still knows exactly where to find his previous teammate. 

“Put down the lamp, Arthur,” the General warns, drawing Due Process.

Ironwood can’t tell if the rotating chair Watts sits on as if atop a throne used to be his, because all the chairs in this military lab are the same. Ironwood’s best scientists had been stationed here to study the Lamp and investigate whether it’s beyond repair, but they’ve all evacuated already, leaving only arrays of test tubes, unkempt papers, and the sharp scent of chlorine behind. Twirling in his seat, Salem’s henchman responds with a snarl.

“Jamie dearie, do you think you really have what it takes to shoot me? If you did you’d just have turned off your pet project robot instead of pestering me. You are really not the brightest bulb in the box.”

Piercing green eyes stare back and forth between the cracked Relic of Knowledge in Arthur’s hand and the headmaster pointing his weapon straight ahead. James knows that smile on Watts’s lips, knows it means he really thought he made a good pun. 

“Your sense of humour is terrible under pressure, Arthur.”

“Yours is  _ always  _ terrible, James, not just when you’re out of your element at pool parties organised by upperclassmen.”

Ironwood remembers that, of course. Willow’s aunt had held that event, provided the unicorn buoy with the sprinkles and the cocktails and all that. The drumming of Arthur’s metallic rings against the bench draws the General from his memories.

“I don’t know if you intend to fight me like last time,” the scientist continues, “but know that Pietro’s precious little robot is entirely controlled by my rings, and they’re locked to my heartbeat, so if you kill me or remove them, she dies. And from what I’ve gathered, she won’t be coming back this time.”

“Why did you betray us?” James calls out. “You were back to working with Pietro like in the good old days, you were back to helping us, and seeing we’ll need help to rebuild everything after the fall of Atlas and Salem’s defeat, you know I could have reinstated you within some capacity. I could have given you labs within Atlas, everything you ever wanted...”

“You know that’s not what I want.”

“Betraying us won’t bring your sister back, it won’t bring Lazlo back, it won’t...”

“How dare you speak his name, when I proposed a line of research for a cure to the disease that took his life, and you brushed it aside?”

“How is it a cure, when it involves combining humans with the Grimm, with our arch-enemies, robbing them of what makes us human in the first place? When it’s not established that life after that cure would even still be worth living?”

“Look who’s speaking. Look at yourself, Jamie. How much human are you still these days? Do you still even mind adding more metal to that body of yours, until you become more machine than man? Didn’t seem like it, that day we fought in the Colosseum.”

“But why give the Staff to Salem? And now the Lamp? Because you think she’ll reward you? What has she promised you? Fame? Fortune? The recognition you keep saying you’ve always deserved?”

“I only sided with you, Pietro, and the rest so long as it helped me survive, and get some recognition for my skill, yes, but mostly stay alive. The second Atlas was safely above the whale and not about to fall onto my head, I knew I could just take the Staff and fly it straight to Salem. And if I give her the Lamp too, she’ll reward me with what I want, since you have no idea what that is.”

“The Lamp is broken. It’s not a Relic any more.”

“It is damaged, true, but it may be… reawakened. I don’t know how yet, but I’m confident I’ll find out.”

“And then Salem will use all the Relics to lay waste on all of Remnant. And if that fails, she’ll just use her Grimm to destroy the world with her own hands. To take away the lives of myriads of starry-eyed boys like Lazlo was back then, of myriads of free-spirited little girls like Salvia -”

“How dare you? No one was like her, and no one will ever be. I thought you were better than that, but you’re a hypocrite, just like Ozpin and the rest of them. You say my sister’s not unique, yet you support Pietro’s twisted plan to build and rebuild that macabre puppet version of his own deceased daughter just because he thinks there was something unique about her he had to replicate in that doll of his.”

“I’ve been reminded lately that Penny isn’t a carbon copy of… well, the first Penny Polendina, but she’s her own person, and she’s a good, selfless person.”

“She was programmed to be selfless. She was programmed to be strong. She was programmed to serve humans, just like any other robot on the Paladin project. It’s an algorithm, nothing more that we can’t replicate in other robots, she doesn’t have a soul of her own that’ll die when you turn her off, she might not even have a consciousness inside that hollow metal head of hers. And yet you’d rather let your kingdom fall and the Staff drop into Salem’s hands than power her down? How dare you even say you fight for the greater good?”

“I can save her, and the Staff, and the lamp, and Atlas and Mantle. I don’t need to sacrifice any of these things.”

“You want to have your cake and eat it? How do you plan to do that?” Arthur scoffs, setting the lamp down on the desk with a soft thud. “I have Penny on my side, she’s not only your strongest military android, she’s also a Maiden. You on the other hand, don’t have any robots I can’t hack, don’t have anything besides a handful of huntsmen and students, a handful of starry-eyed boys and free-spirited girls you’d hesitate to send against my Penny, because you know she won’t hesitate to murder them.”

Staring down as if in defeat, the General sits down heavily into one of the squeaking and swiveling chairs that looks identical to Arthur’s.

“You know, Artie, I used to love you.”

“So the rumours were true. How touching.”

“I used to love you like a brother. You, and Willow, and Laz. I used to love you like the family I lost, like the family I never had. And I don’t expect you to ever love me back as a brother now, not even as a friend or an ally, but I thought you’d at least respect me, the way I respect you.”

“How am I disrespecting you now? If I’d disrespected you, I’d have escaped on a hijacked airship and caused Atlas to fall or implode. But no, I leave Atlas intact and you still think I’m disrespectful, why? Pray tell, Jamie dearie.”

The headmaster wonders why Arthur left Atlas intact. Maybe out of nostalgia for all the years they spent there, walking their way through the Academy’s corridors, all the years they thrived there in many ways, despite all the hardships they faced. Maybe out of pity for Willow, their previous teammate, who doesn’t deserve seeing her city fall after all she’s been through. Maybe because Watts does care. Not that Ironwood really cares now that he has a plan to execute.

“If you’d respected me, you wouldn’t have underestimated my forces.”

“Your forces, under my control at the tip of my fingers,” Arthur retorts with a smirk, carefully inspecting his rings.

“You’d have remembered that I have a Maiden on my side.”

“But the Summer Maiden was last seen in Vacuo, unless...”

The light of panic in Watt’s irises is priceless as realisation finally dawns on him. As he remembers who was brought into Atlesian custody the day he was broken out…

“Funny you’d forget, I thought you were so proud of that masterpiece that’s your work on her arm.”

“It’s impossible, I changed the codes to all the prison cells with a random generator to make sure she doesn’t escape, so there’s no way you could have broken her out...”

“While you were distracted by me toying around with your oversized ego, an... acquaintance of mine went down to the prisons and guessed the code to Cinder’s cell. He’s a lucky one, it usually takes him one or two tries at most to get any code right. Especially since a certain bird of bad omen has been sitting dangerously close to the random generator on your Scroll right now.”

Following the General’s gaze, the scientist stares back at his electronic devices - just in time for the black-winged corvid to flutter onto the Relic of Knowledge and take flight toward the window with the lamp in its talons. Just before the bird can crash against the glass, James fires a bullet that shatters the window, creating an opening just big enough for the avian and relic to fly through.

“Gods-damned Branwen!” Watts curses under his breath, drawing his weapon to shoot at the crow, only to give up in fear of shattering the already damaged lamp.

“The gods won’t come back any time soon to damn anyone,” James retorts solemnly, knocking the gun out of Arthur’s hand with a practised blow to his wrist.

“I haven’t said my last word, Jamie.”

And before the General can realise, the hacker plucks a cable previously charging his Scrolls and slams it into Ironwood’s arm. The discharge hits James, paralysing his metal half-body, and the air becomes unbreathable, as if suddenly turning to ice. It’s freezing, it’s scalding, he’s shivering… and when he notices he’s moving again, breathing again, Arthur has jumped out the window, waving his rings to call a military airship to catch him on the flight. The plane tilts until its wings point vertically, allowing the scientist to fall through the side door, before angling back to horizontal just in time for Watts to regain his footing and wave mockingly at his previous teammate. 

“Are you okay? That was a cool line,” a recognisably raspy voice comments from James’s side, before he can notice that Qrow turned back to his human form next to him. 

“It’s nothing, just a small electric shock. He wasn’t trying to kill me, only distract me.”

The shapeshifter’s hand rummages across the General’s chest to make sure, searching for remaining static currents, for dents or signs of damage. And James can’t tell if it’s the aftermath of the discharge, or if Qrow’s touch has always been this electrifying. Noting the wide-eyed gaze of the headmaster wandering between his crimson eyes and his lips, Qrow leans in to press a brief, soft peck against his lover’s mouth. 

“Look at you,” the scythe-wielder drawls. “Outsmarting Dr. Arthur Watts of all people, playing him like a fiddle, and now using Cinder to reclaim the Staff. I thought she used to terrify you.”

“It’s a good thing I’ve been obsessing over her then, even in my nightmares, for that allowed me to remember she existed and could be used for our plan.”

A smile graces the shifter’s lips, and that’s a sight worth the world and more to Ironwood’s eyes.

“Do you… think it will work?”

“I know her well enough to know she’ll go after the Staff. You know, she and I are not so different...”

“Bullshit. Total bullshit. She wants power to call herself a goddess, you want power because you need it to do what’s right for the greater good.”

James is about to retort that Cinder probably thinks her goddess self is what’s best for humankind, but he senses Qrow wants to add something.

“But you’re worried it won’t work?”

“I’m thinking, I have one or two ideas in case that doesn’t work… with my luck, I prefer being too prepared than not enough.”

“I trust you, Qrow.”

* * *

“Oh, you brought Zwei, that’s perfect,” Qrow comments.

“Why?” Oscar mouths hesitantly, stepping onto the balcony next to the shifter, the dog that hasn’t left him all day since belly rubs following him closely. “You don’t want to throw him down the balcony, do you? Or to throw me down with him?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“Of course I won’t. Besides, a birdie told me you might have developed the bubble capacity to survive the fall and protect the pup, if I did throw you.”

“I’d better not test that out.”

“But also, I’m not sure that would work. As in, I'm not sure any of us almost dying is the best way to bring her here.”

Qrow remembers Kuroyuri, still fresh in his mind since his latest nightmare. She must’ve sensed his poisoning, his festering wound in the following days, through their link. Yet, no one came to save him. 

He remembers Brunswick Farm, the Apathy, he could have died and he wouldn’t even have noticed, with how much alcohol flowed through his veins, and just how tired he felt, tired with betrayals and false friendships, tired with misfortune, tired with life. Yet, no one flew in to save him. 

He remembers the tundra, the breathtaking sunrise, two words, a promise, a smile, turquoise eyes, Tyrian’s escape and the airships coming for Qrow, he remembers crying out all the tears he didn’t even know his body had for all these years. Yet, no one flew in to save him. 

He still doesn’t really know how their kindred link works. He doesn’t really know what makes her react, whenever she decides to care. But still, he has to try. They have to try, because that’s the best they can do now.

Nervously, Qrow flicks Clover’s pin on his lapel. And that feels weird, and he feels stupid. But he hopes that’ll work. Sensing his distress, Zwei comes to rub his fluffy face against the hem of the shapeshifter’s pants. 

“Want a hug?” Oscar asks Qrow with the slightest hint of apprehension. 

“Sure.”

* * *

The icy winds are tangling her hair. Whipping her face. Biting her skin. 

It hurts. She likes it. 

Because it means she’s free. Free to fly away from Atlas, from that horrendous cell she’s been trapped in, from that city that’s always felt like a gilded cage full of exotic pets to her. The city that’s about to fall anytime now. 

Not only that, but she knows exactly where to find the Staff of Creation. It was foolish of them to tell her, to believe she’d be willing to work with them to retrieve the relic. She doesn’t work for anyone, not even Salem, except for one Cinder Fall, and no one can stop her now. 

The Lamp had outlived its utility for this century, so disposing of it wasn’t such a sacrifice. The Staff, on the other hand? Now that she’s already destroyed a relic to prevent the return of the old gods, she could use the Staff as a handy new toy. The Atlesian relic is infinite power, it’s everything she’s ever wanted, everything her goddess’s instinct’s ever craved, the only thing that could ever satiate her endless greed, her endless need for everything, everything or nothing at all. 

She’d have needed to settle for nothing at all, weren’t it for her the Staff. But now she can see its azure tip glistening through the cloudy skies, now that she can see its golden pole in the metal hands of Ironwood’s puppet with her fiery eyes and her new toys, the relic’s shine only becomes more enticing than ever before. The promise of the smell of burnt steel, of the delectable sound of her Grimm hand tearing through the robot’s half-molten metal before Cinder reduces the puppet to chars and claims the Staff and Winter Maiden powers for herself in one fell swoop is beyond tantalising.

No one’s ever really given a penny for Cinder’s thoughts. Everyone’s always taken her for granted. Her emotions, her desires, her needs… no one’s ever really cared. Empathy never worked, and only intimidation ever got her what she wanted. They never loved her, never respected how she felt, so she can only teach them to fear her, and teach herself to love every step of the way. 

But now, if anyone gave a penny for her thoughts, all they’d get back would be a penny. 

Because right now, that’s all there is to her thoughts. 

A penny. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Evil mind-controlled) Penny vs (kinda working with the good guys) Cinder in the next chapter! This one is kinda long and I’m already afraid the next one’s gonna be even longer. Stay tuned, and above all stay safe xx


	26. (it feels) like home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: violence, blood, mention of alcoholism, anti-Faunus racism (yikes), Whitley is kinda there

It’s been said Penny has no soul, because she has no Aura of her own. 

It’s been said she can’t really feel fear, or love, or ache, because she has no soul of her own. 

It’s been said she’s just a puppet on strings, strings pulled by algorithms, algorithms that Watts controls with all of his ring fingers right now. 

If it’s all true, if it’s not her mind, if it’s not her soul, then why is she so terrified, when there’s nothing she can do, when she’s trapped inside her body while Watts is controlling her every movement, her every action, her every reaction? While her swords are fanning out around a spinning disc to shield her from Cinder’s fiery bursts? While the Fall Maiden’s flames don’t touch her, she’s too hot, she’s too cold, she can’t think, can’t move, can’t break free from the strings puppeting her, can’t do anything but watch as events unfold by the doing of her own hand, outside of her control…

Penny’s mind is too dark, Penny’s mind is a prison, but the flames are too bright outside. Penny’s mind is too silent, but the aerial battle is raging outside. Cinder is pirouetting in mid-sky, fire sprouting out of her hands and feet as she dances between Penny’s blades, rebounds on the flat of one, summons a sword of her own to deflect some glancing attacks, backflips so the weapons locked onto her trajectory have to spiral around and entangle their wires. Smirking confidently, hungrily, the Fall Maiden yanks the entwined swords aside and raises her human hand to fire a blast of flames into the robot’s face. 

Under Arthur’s control, Penny raises a palm of her own to match Cinder’s, and a plume of pure icy energy shoots out from her hand, filling the sky with cerulean light as her cold cancels out Cinder’s hea. The most infinitesimal layer of ambient-temperature air lives where their powers collide, like the eye of a cyclone around which ice and flame start to twirl, to clash, to dance. 

Undeterred, the Winter Maiden’s swords rearrange into separate modules, ready to shoot out lasers at her adversary. Cinder doesn’t notice at first, until green light cuts through red and blue, and her single eye widens in terror. Her power seems to wrap inward towards its bearer, and at first there’s not much, barely a shimmer, like a mirage. Because that’s what it is - a mirage so scalding that it curves the trajectory of light beams and deflects them away from the Fall maiden, wrapping her in an unbreakable protective globe. 

Unleashing her Maiden powers, Penny blasts the bubble with her coldest of colds. Sharp shards of ice form out of thin air, crackling as lightning swirls around her, around Cinder, as lightning strays away and saturates the stormy sea of clouds below. The android lowers her hand, and all the shards, all the sparks, all the swords rain toward Cinder. And light bursts into existence, and everything bursts into light. But inside Penny’s head is still too dark, too cold, too hollow, and until she can’t gain back control it doesn’t feel like home.

When the icy storm subsides, all that’s left of the attack is a thin bubble, as thin as paper, like the thinnest of soap bubbles crystallised into iridescent ice. At the centre, Cinder floats like a ballerina trapped in a snow globe, the pallid light caressing her face diffracted into rainbows by the surface of the bubble. It’s beautiful. It’s fragile. It’s fleeting. 

And it doesn’t take very long for Cinder’s arm to tear its way out. 

In mid-air, they clash, again and again. Ice against fire, clashing as inevitably as winter follows fall. The android who wanted to become a real girl and the real girl who turned part Grimm. The mind-controlled puppet and the aspiring goddess who wants to control everything, to hold Remnant in the palm of her hand. 

Penny’s swords spin out lethal trajectories, tracing complex arcs, striking each time with surgical precision. Cinder’s swords break at every other impact, but she forges new weapons with renewed fury each time as the adrenaline courses through her, burning hotter each time and she revels in each second of it. 

Parrying a green-hilted sword stabbing toward her arm, the Fall Maiden swaps her grip on one of her weapons and instead throws it like a javelin. She knows the ‘real’ Penny wouldn’t fall for the trick a second time, but Cinder wonders if Arthur knows. The robot manages to dodge the first projectile, but can’t evade more fiery shards as they rain down on her… until she catches one flying dangerously close to her eye between her metal fingers, and everything explodes. 

Cinder allows herself a satisfied smile when she sees Penny’s Aura starting to flicker while the redhead plummets… but she has to remember she had a clear objective in mind, and she can’t let herself become distracted and fail so close to her goal as before. Reaching out her Grimm arm elastically, she plucks the Staff of Creation like a flower off the android Maiden’s boot. Arching her brow in contemplation, she twirls the relic between her boneless black fingers, shrinking its size until it can squarely fit inside her pocket. 

Then only does she pick up a falling Penny. 

Her Grimm hand stretches out again, wrapping like a constrictor boa around the robot’s chest and arms to make sure her swords can’t burst out of her back. Bony white claws caress Penny’s freckled face, and green eyes can only stare in terror when the powers start to drain from the android’s body, flowing in packets of light through Cinder’s arm toward the Fall Maiden’s body. 

And it hurts. Each wave of foreign Aura, collapsing into Cinder’s own, hurts. Each built up a crave, an addiction, a need to be whole again, a pulsion to never stop until the entirety of the power becomes hers, until there is no more power, no more magic in all of Remnant that isn’t hers, all hers, hers always, hers forever… It hurts, and Cinder withstands the pain, because if that’s what it takes to be whole, to finally exist, she’ll take the pain any day, all of the pain and then some. 

Staggering in the sky under the pain, under the pleasure, the scalding burn of the adrenaline pumping through her and the freezing cold of the Winter powers, Cinder needs to squint to witness the tiniest of snowflakes on Penny’s nose, between her large, fear-stricken emerald eyes. She might mistake it for the robot girl’s nose growing, perhaps lying to herself in denial of her impending death, if it even means anything for a robot to die. She might mistake it for a stray freckle until it grows larger and sharper...

It’s hardly a sword, hardly even a knife made of pure ice. But Penny still catches the sharp icicle with her teeth, and with a single rotation of her neck, uses the blade to sever Cinder’s arm. 

The Grimm tissue wrapped tightly around her dissolves into a myriad of particles, and the black appendage is writhing as if it has a life of its own. Even Cinder can’t control it as inky clouds shed from the amputated limb, screaming and howling in pure pain, and maybe the pain’s worth it, but why does it matter? She can feel the end coming, she can feel her body saturated with pain and she can’t do anything to stop Penny’s swords gliding around her, their metal tendrils wrapping around her torso, her arms, her legs, ready to tear her apart. Each cable cuts as sharply as a blade, and each cable hurts, and she can feel it. But with this much pain, she just can’t care. 

Watts knows what happened at the fall of Beacon. Of course he does, he orchestrated it from the shadows, he gave Cinder the blueprints of Penny so she could stage her defeat, he hacked into the Vale network to broadcast Cinder’s speech following her dismemberment. 

Watts doesn’t like Cinder. Of course he doesn’t, he’s never liked Cinder since the day he met her, since she started competing with him and everyone else for Salem’s preference, since the fateful day his sister... he just hates Cinder. That’s a secret to nobody. 

Watts is a sucker for poetic justice. And of course he can arrange Penny’s swords so they can slice Cinder apart just the same way as Penny was split into quarters that day in the Vytal festival tournament. 

Cinder closes her eyes, wondering if she’ll really meet her end this time.

Penny, however, isn’t a sucker for poetic justice. From what she remembers of her first death, she doesn’t wish it upon anyone, including Cinder. She may not remember much of her past life. She may not have a mind of her own. She may not have a soul of her own. She may not even truly have personal feelings of her own. But she has a heart, even if it’s metal, it’s beating right now, and it’s telling her she shouldn’t do that, that she shouldn’t dismember her enemies for the sake of poetic justice, because that’s unfair.

And it’s telling her she can tap into the fully realised powers of the Winter Maiden, because those are under the control of her Aura that’s not even hers. But at least it’s not under the mercy of Arthur’s rings. 

And every beat her heart beats, a new wave of cold radiates out of each and every pore of her skin. And every beat her heart beats, the Staff inches closer to her until it sticks to her side like a magnet to metal, because its magic answers to her after she unlocked the Vault, and not to anyone else. And every beat her heart beats, the tornado around her intensifies, whipping her face, tousling her hair, growing madly like a flower blooms. Until each cable entangled around her adversary freezes off and shatters, until every green sword rains out of the sky, and it hurts, each wire connected to Penny hurts as it snaps off and it’s worth it, it’s worth it if it means preserving her humanity, even if she wasn’t human to start with and it makes no sense. 

It never made any sense, and that doesn’t matter. 

When the tornado dwindles, there’s only a shred left of Penny’s Aura, and if she could cry, tears would be pouring down her cheeks. But she can’t. She can’t cry, can’t know what it feels like to have salty tears rolling down her lips. Can’t eat cookies, can’t know what they taste like, will never know how they can crunch under her teeth, how they can melt atop her tongue. Can’t have raisins, will never know what the whole debate around them is even about - but at least maybe now she knows what it’s like to feel human. To feel compassion, to feel the illogical drive to forgive even her enemy, because she knows, vaguely, illogically, deeply, what that pain feels like, and she knows deeply, illogically, vaguely that she doesn’t want anyone else to go through it. 

At least maybe she knows what it’s like to be loved. To have friends watching her back. To have a family refusing to shut her down, a family that wouldn’t trade her against anything, even the fate of Atlas itself. And Atlas, her home, may be falling out of the clouds soon, but as long as her friends and family are there, as long as Uncle James believes in her and in the slightest probability there might be a real person with a real heart somewhere in there, it feels like home. 

The Huntresses and Huntsmen atop summoned Manticores and Queen Lancers don’t need to uncloak themselves, Penny’s sensors can already detect their moving Auras. 

She expects it when Marrow yells “Stay!” from atop Weiss’s summon and Cinder’s silhouette stops falling in mid-air, encased in a thick sheet of ice of Penny’s making, and the stinger of the insect-like Grimm catches the Fall Maiden. From behind the Faunus Operative, Ruby activates her silver eyes, subduing Cinder before she can break free. 

She expects it when Winter glides by on her Manticore with the Happy Huntresses responsible for keeping the summons and their riders invisible from Cinder. With tears streaking her face - Penny still wonders what tears taste like - Winter commands her silvery Grimm to shoot out an orb of pure energy, hitting the android’s midsection and draining away what little Aura she has left. 

She expects it when Pietro’s voice comes back to her comms, now that the barrier of her own Aura has been broken, when he shouts meaningless nothings like when he was lulling her to sleep in her prototype days when he still needed to swap out her parts. 

She expects it all - but it doesn’t matter now. Because her Aura’s down, and she’s falling. Through the sky, to the ground, as surely as gravity. 

The sky’s gray. More and more gray. The world’s fading, and she can feel herself rebooting in and out of consciousness. 

She doesn’t know it when a series of spinning glyphs try to catch her and fail, shattering on impact. 

She doesn’t know it when she plummets through the clouds, plummets toward Mantle, past flocks of wayward birds. 

She doesn’t realise they’re not flocks of birds, just a lone raven and a lone crow. 

She doesn’t realise when a swirling red portal opens beneath her, and whisks her away before she can fall to her death. 

* * *

Qrow knows from the feeling of the grass blades caressing his face that he’s home. 

The grass blades are cluttered with fresh, iridescent dew drops that have that earth smell to them as if it just rained. 

It didn’t just rain. Patch is just always like that. Home is just always like that. 

There is a crater where Penny just fell, just next to a familiar wood cabin. If she’d fallen any further, amassed any more speed before the portal opened under her, she’d have shattered into a rain of metal scraps, and nothing of her would’ve been salvageable. Still, her landing caused quite a commotion, and in his daze following the explosion Qrow must have shifted back to his human form unknowingly. 

Stumbling slightly, he walks to the edge of the dirt crater, and looks down to see Raven, also under her human form, trying to detach the Staff off of Penny’s motionless form. He draws Harbinger in one smooth move, prompting her sister to press her blade against the android’s unreactive neck. 

“One more step, and she dies,” the tribeswoman snarls. 

“Raven, don’t be ridiculous, let go of her and hand me the Staff so I can restore it to slow the fall of Atlas.”

"I wasn't sure you'd be pathetic enough to fall for that. She's not human or Faunus, look," Raven presses her red blade to the android's neck to demonstrate. "She doesn't even bleed."

She doesn't bleed. Instead, she shines. Omen only elicits a trail of sparks, cutting through the paint and skin to reveal a patch of steel that glistens in the sunlight. 

"And yet she's family to me, more than you've ever been," her brother speaks with absolute certainty. 

"Poor Qrow, loving a tin can more than his sister," she coos like a dove. "I’d almost have thought you have a thing for tin cans."

There's no point in denying it. Raven saw Qrow on that sofa, lovingly treating the General’s metal hand to a manicure.

“What’s the plan, Rae? You expect me to let you walk away with the Relic?”

The tribeswoman examines the Staff, then Penny, running tentative fingers through her synthetic hair.

“And the robot, too. She looks mostly intact. With all the Lien I could make from her spare parts, the tribe will never need to raid another village until the day I die. And of course, with the infinite energy of the Staff that Ozpin told me exactly how to harness...”

“If you think I’ll let you take the girl,” Qrow interrupts, “you’re out of your damn mind.”

“Oh really? What can you do to stop me? Either you let me take her, or I kill her.”

“... I see,” he exhales, tossing Harbinger to the ground with a soft thud and raising both hands as if in defeat. 

“You’ve always been a coward,” Raven sneers, “but at least you aren’t as stupid-”

She’s interrupted by a series of clicks as Qrow’s weapon transforms into scythe form when it meets the floor and rebounds on the pole part, sending the blade high enough to slice off a low-hanging tree branch over their heads. Just their luck, the falling wood and leaves brush against Raven’s Fire Dust blade and immediately set ablaze, prompting the female shapeshifter to let go of Penny and smother the flames before they can spread to her hair and clothing. 

As she grunts in rage at her brother’s Semblance, Qrow’s already closing the distance, rolling under her sword to regain his own weapon and immediately lift it overhead, shielding himself from her downward slash. With a practised gesture, he swaps his weapon to gun form and peppers her with a series of bullets which she blocks with her palm, her Aura rippling out at each impact.

The siblings trade blow for blow, strike for strike, but they know each other well enough to counter each move, so neither can gain the upper hand. Pressing her hand to the flat of his broadsword, Raven deflects a forward thrust and spins around to kick him in the thigh in one smooth gesture. He loses his balance on the soft grass, but swiftly converts his momentum by converting his weapon to tonfa mode and striking at her exposed back. Surprise flashes in her sanguine eyes at the sight of Harbinger’s new form, but she narrowly evades by shrinking into bird form and immediately shifting back. 

The next time Qrow prepares to attack, her sword is already against his, sparks straying from the point of contact between their Dust and metal blades. 

“You tried to use me, baby brother,” she accuses, anger flashing in her gaze. “You wanted me to recuperate the Staff for you in case Cinder failed. And to portal the robot to safety, which I did. You tried to manipulate me, and yet you and the rest of Ozpin’s followers think you’re high and mighty, compared to the rest of us...”

“I’m only trying to do the right thing,” he shrieks back, “and I was hoping you would too! Return the Staff so that we can crash Atlas into the whale and then lower the city to the ground as slowly as possible. Millions of lives are at stake!”

“And why should I care?”

“Even if you don’t care for the people of Mantle or Atlas, Yang is still there, and so are Oz and Zwei right now...”

“I already saved Yang once, I owe her nothing. Oz owed me everything, owed  _ us  _ everything after he betrayed us, but now he’s outlived his utility, now he’s told me all I needed to know about using the Staff...”

Qrow can sense the slightest hint of a broken sob in her voice, and he knows her too well to ignore it. His teeth clench in focus as he manoeuvres the contact between their weapons to stand in the way between Raven and the still motionless Penny. 

“You let Yang go at Haven, with the lamp even. I know you still have a good heart in you, even if it’s corrupted by fear. It’s okay, fear’s a human emotion too, it can still help you do the right thing.”

“You’re wrong, giving into fear will only make me a coward like you!”

She presses further, but his eyes flare red, and her Dust blade splinters away under the resistance of Harbinger. Swift on her feet, she avoids Qrow’s weapon breaking past her guard and slicing toward her face. Instead, his Aura focused into his sword slashes forward in a pure white arc, knocking down one of the flower pots in front of the wood cabin. 

It’s a shame, those potted roses used to be Summer’s favourites. 

What that accomplishes, at least, is to draw the dragon out of its den. 

"NOT ONLY YOU TWO STOLE MY DOG, BUT YOU. DESTROYED. MY. FRONT. LAWN."

His blonde hair is glistening with droplets, probably fresh out of the shower - which explains why he hadn’t come out earlier when Penny crashed hard enough to destroy said front lawn. He rolls his tan, still-humid shoulders tentatively as if ready to spring into battle, noting his two previous teammates already have their weapons drawn.

“Tai, who do you think I am?” his ex-wife snorts. “Your dog delivery service?”

As she speaks, her stance shifts as her sword tip tilts and she turns, ready to face him. Qrow remembers Tai used to be a hot-head, just like his eldest daughter, ready to pounce into action at the slightest provocation. Now his brother-in-law can only hope Tai’s calmed down since then. After all, it’s been forever since they’ve last talked, the three of them… the surviving members of team STRQ...

“What did you do to Zwei?!?” Tai shouts. 

“Zwei’s fine, he’s with Oz…” Qrow mumbles, recalling the blonde doesn’t even know Oscar, nor was he aware of Ozma’s many lives. “I mean, he’s in Atlas… unless they’ve already evacuated, then they’re in Mantle.”

“What do you mean, evacuated?” Taiyang echoes. “Is Atlas under attack, like Beacon and Haven were? Are Yang and Ruby there too?”

With the lack of CCT and the delays it would take for letters to reach their destinations, it’s now wonder Tai doesn’t know what happened yet.

“Worse,” Raven winces. “Atlas is about to fall...” with a yawn, she peers through the window to check Tai’s clock on his wall, “it may already have fallen by now.”

“You left my daughters and my dog in a war zone in one of two cities with one about to collapse on top of the others? Qrow, I thought you were looking after them?!? WHAT ARE YOU TWO EVEN DOING HERE?”

“Letting the dog get sandwiched between the cities. Dog sandwich. Like a hot-dog,” Raven smirks, and no one laughs.

“That’s a long story...” the scythe-wielder drawls. 

“This was the only portal I could open that was far away from said war zone,” Raven clarifies. “I just needed to get  _ this  _ out of the way...”

She nods to the Staff, still lying with Penny in her dirt crater. 

“This? A broken android who looks like a teenage girl… wait, is that an upgrade of Ironwood’s robot who was destroyed at the Vytal Festival? And don’t tell me it’s a long story, Qrow.”

“I won’t. Rae, now be reasonable and open a portal to Zwei so Tai can get his dog back.”

“But the girls…” Tai mumbles before being interrupted by his ex-wife.

“Do you think I’m stupid? By using Zwei as an excuse? That I don’t know you’ll try to fly through with the Staff to return it to your tinman boyfriend?”

“I thought you hated Ironwood?” Tai frowns, ultramarine eyes open wide. 

“It’s a long story,” Qrow repeats. 

“Yes, this has lasted long enough,” his twin concurs. 

And before either man can react, she swipes a portal open to reappear behind her sibling and next to the relic and Penny, her sword raised high. And that’s all it takes for Tai to strike, ready to step in the way between Raven’s blade and the poor robot girl. 

Tai doesn’t have his weapon. He doesn’t need one. Qrow knows that, no doubt Rae knows too. Especially not with his Semblance, combined with his paternal instincts kicking in and how well he knows both siblings’ fighting styles. Raven’s slashes are a near-impenetrable barrage, raging and relentless, and Tai’s punches are few and far between as he backs down slowly but surely. But each hit counts. His hand catches her wrist, applying just enough pressure to make her grip loosen around the hilt of Omen. As she reaches for her weapon with her other hand, he drags her arm over and kicks her in the shins, compromising her balance as the ex-married couple ends up in a brawling mess on the dirty floor. 

But Qrow doesn’t have all day to watch more foreplay between these old lovebirds, he still needs Raven to open him a portal back to Atlas so he can return the Staff before the city falls - there’s no way he can return in time if he flies there by his own means. Shifting Harbinger to its scythe form, he pounces into the fray, pushing Taiyang back with the pole part of his weapon while his sister scrambles for her sword to parry his blade. Until Tai kicks him back, and that hurts. 

More than the impact of his shoe to the shifter’ poor gut,  _ the intent hurts.  _ He knows Tai can’t trust him because he should be protecting Ruby and Yang in Atlas, not breaking up an old previously married pair in Patch. He knows Tai still resents him for leaving with the kids so many months ago, encouraging their life-risking endeavours and only sparsely writing home. He knows he hasn’t returned Zwei as he should have, which certainly doesn’t help Tai trust him or Raven. 

He knows that kick was well-deserved. And yet.  _ It still hurts. _

His hands are trembling again, he’s on the ground covered in dirt and grass and dew and he’s not getting up. Because he can’t move can’t think can’t breathe and his heart is threatening to pulse its way out of his ribcage. The last time he tried to break up a fight between two old friends, the last time he ended up caught in a three-way battle while one of his friends - no,  _ family  _ now - lay unconscious after a crash… It didn’t end well. He remembers the frozen tundra. A sunrise, a breathtaking sunrise. He’s too scared to blink, too scared of the flashbacks that’ll come back and haunt him. Because no matter what he doesn’t, they’ll always come back to haunt him. 

But not this time. Even if just not this time, because this time he has the world to save, his nieces to save, and he has to push through. 

His fingertips are shaking against the hilt of Harbinger. His hands are shaking. Every fiber of his body is shaking. The world is shaking. 

But he has to push through.

How can he push through? Defeat the ghosts of his past that stop him from moving forward?

He has to push through.

There is a wake-up call. 

Because lightning is striking.

Lightning is striking the blade of his scythe, knocking it out of his hand and making his fingers quake even more at the shock. If that’s even possible. 

It’s too hot. Too cold. And yet he must carry on. This is a wake-up call.

Raven’s eyes are flaming blue as more lightning comes crashing down, and as Taiyang rolls over to avoid, a flash of blue erupts from her hand, encasing him in solid ice. 

Qrow isn’t stupid. He’s in shock, in more ways than one, but he’s not stupid. 

“You’re the Spring Maiden,” he realises. “Of course you are, of course you’d have claimed the power for yourself since you can’t trust anyone else to have control over it. I hope the previous Maiden did really care about you.”

“She was young, inexperienced, easy to impress, and a coward. I gave her no other choice,” his sister spat back. “Just like you, trembling on the ground like a newborn rat. I give you no other choice either. Give up, so I don’t have to turn you into a popsicle too.”

“C’mon,” Qrow pants, dusting off the dirt from his clothes as he slowly gets back to his feet. “We both know Tai’ll be fine, with his fiery temperament he’ll break free soon enough, your ice can’t hurt him. And neither will I let you hurt me.”

Unimpressed, she shoots out more blue energy from the palm of her hand. His leg ends up frozen, but it only takes a stroke of bad luck for him to trip on the uneven ground and break himself out of it. Growling, she lifts off the floor, pelting more icicles, fire balls in his direction, hitting him with all she’s got as she levitates at full power. But unfortunate gusts of wind sweep by, and her attacks demolish the poor nearby trees instead. Her twin doesn’t make any effort to attack back. He just stands there, eyes gleaming bright sanguine red as his Semblance radiates out, staring up at her in defiance. 

“At least have the decency to strike back, baby brother!” she cries out, clenching her fists in frustration. 

The sky grows dark, unfurling new cloudy cyclones, and soon electricity sparks overhead again, its full force focused onto the male shapeshifter. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink. He just breathes, and lightning strikes twice, thrice at the same place - at a particularly tall pine tree right behind him. Save for some ashen dirt over his shoulder, he’s unscathed, and he’s still standing.

“Better luck next time,” he smirks at her, seriously considering winking and saluting if the strain and focus didn’t drain his Aura so quickly. 

But he still has to push through. 

He draws in a deep breath, and misfortune spreads to his surroundings, until each dew drop, each grass blade is saturated with bad luck. Penny coughs out a flurry of sparks on the ground, slowly stirred awake by her own pain and malfunctions. Raven’s hair is a windswept mess, and she lands back on the lawn with a scowl on her face. And Tai’s ice prison crumbles apart as he immediately springs out to tackle his ex-wife. 

Qrow steps in between them, and on impact, his Aura breaks.

He’s still trembling. In fear, in shock, in ache after massively over-using his Semblance… But he’s still standing.

Raven’s blade carves out a curve against his shoulder blade - before withdrawing shakily, clumsily. It leaves only a shallow cut, but Qrow knows it’s going to be a damn pain later when he needs to fly.

He’s still trembling, but he’s still standing. Just barely. Just enough to make his point. 

“See, Rae? You don’t have the guts to kill me. You don’t have the gut to lose one of the only people left in Remnant for whom you actually care. Especially not since you lost Vernal.”

“You… remember her name?” she whispers confusedly.

“I remember, because I care. And I know you care, too, because we’re cut out of the same cloth, you and I. We’re cowards, we play dirty, we don’t care for the rules, but we care for the people. We’ve been through shit, so much damn shit, but we still care. And I’d take a thousand more cuts like this one just to prove this point. Just to make you understand, just this once. That you’re afraid of killing me, because there’s still a heart beating deep inside you, sis. And. You. Still. Care.”

He can feel her breath falling raggedly onto his freshly wounded skin, and even that hurts, but it’s worth it. Because he may not have turned his sister to the good side forever, if there’s even such a thing as the good side, but he might have made her question herself. Just this once. He might have made her recall that humanity buried deep inside her, deeper each passing minute, deep beneath the armour, deep beneath the scars, deep beneath the cold flames that flicker out of her teary eyes. Just this instant, this split second, just this once. And that’s all worth it.

"C'mon, Rae,” he adds nervously as she says nothing, “you wouldn't have brought Zwei to me in Atlas when I was at my lowest point and needing cuddles the most, if you didn't care…"

Tai arches his most incredulous, still sweaty brow. 

"Qrow, did you just… finally admit you enjoy cuddling Zwei? After all these years?"

"Okay, maybe I lied. I'm trying to save the world here, and you're not helping."

The blonde stifles a giggle before schooling his features to display a more serious expression.

“You both still care for Yang, right?” he says, reminding the twins of more pressing matters. “And Ruby, and Zwei who’ll end up sandwiched between Atlas and Mantle when the sky city falls soon? Isn’t there something we can do?”

“That Staff right there is a source of infinite energy,” Qrow points, “it will keep Atlas from falling if I return it in time.”

“Rae, can you open a portal to Yang and get the Staff to Atlas?” Tai wonders.

“Everyone’s likely in Mantle after the evacuation,” she stammers, looking at the floor, “so Qrow would have to fly the relic all the way to Atlas, where I suspect the General and his robots may still be waiting for him to return the Staff. Unfortunately I can’t go, because if your tin man recognises me he’ll shoot me on sight.”

“But you two can make yourselves useful,” the scythe-wielder reflects. “Penny’s too badly hurt to go back to Atlas with me, after all it’s a war zone right now. If you could just take care of her - ”

“Uncle Qrow, are you saying that these two strangers are my new Aunt and Uncle now?” Penny murmurs weakly as she attempts and fails to stand up. I was deliberating whether to obliterate them on sight with my eye lasers.” 

“I like her already,” Raven comments with obvious reluctance.

“Come to think of it, sis, I’m not sure calling upon your parenting skills was a good idea...” Qrow sighs. 

“Of course it is, I always love more aunts and uncles! I have three uncles already!”

“Should I be surprised if that includes your paranoid half-machine boyfriend? And the other Mr Muscles who was cuddling with you on the couch and likes your cookies?” Raven shoots a glare at her brother. 

“Absolutely!” Penny grins widely. 

“What did I miss?” Tai mumbles almost simultaneously. “And here I thought I was the one trying to date everyone at the same time.”

Scowling wordlessly, Raven raises her blade to cut a portal open.

“At least I’m not trying to date  _ all my teammates _ ,” Qrow retorts. “And as much as I’d like to stay for tea and gossip, I’ve got the world to save. By the way, Tai, you owe me twenty. Raven still can open a portal to Zwei, because she still loves him.”

Tai tilts his head in inquiry.

“After all this time?” 

Qrow doesn’t have time to listen to his sibling’s answer as he steps through the swirling red opening, the Staff of Creation in hand.

* * *

“You don’t need the binoculars, Yang.”

Even staring through the enlarging lenses, the last airship that left Atlas is hardly larger than a fly, as seen from Mantle. A sparse flock of Beringels and Nevermores surround the planes as they evacuate, but the Huntsmen aboard the transports try their best to keep them at bay. Most Grimm aren’t focused on the ships, strangely enough, but rather on the floating city itself - on the fleetingly floating city, its gigantic base spewing out Dust, the floating city that could fall any time now. 

“Yang, the binoculars. You don’t need them,” Blake repeats, almost pleadingly. 

And she’s right. The blonde wants to retort that Blake’s enhanced feline Faunus vision helps her distinguish fine details all the way up there, as the last evacuation plane departs from Atlas. But that’s no needed to see the Manta fly past the whale. 

That’s not needed to see the Grimm’s giant, grisly, uneven jaws slide open. 

That’s not needed to see the humongous, jagged teeth close. 

With the tiny airship swallowed whole. Like a grain of salt upon within that immense mouth.

No number of Huntsmen could have helped them. No amount of Aura could have helped them. No amount of Dust could have saved them. 

Yang’s not crying. She should be, a voice inside her says, but her eyes remain dry, so dry it stings, and she almost hates herself. But she has to keep moving on now, because there’s so much she must still do, so much mess still around her. 

She’ll cry later. 

Some day, when this is all over… 

Only then, when she knows she’s safe, she’ll cry...

Hopefully. 

Yang puts down the binoculars, and then she can see it. 

The crowd. Hundreds of eyes around Blake and Yang, bright with tears, rife with fear. The Mantlese crowd, so many eyes, and the same flame that flickers within all of them. The same flame, dying, almost drowned out by the fear. The same hope, perhaps gone forever…

Only cacophony is left now, and that’s nonsense. 

“My nephew was on that ship… if he even made it there.”

“What are you Huntresses doing here? Why are you here policing the crowds in Mantle while you should be protecting these innocents’ lives.”

“There’s nothing that Huntresses or Huntsmen could have done. There’s nothing that can be done. We’re lost.”

“All we can do is pray for the gods to save us.”

“But the new fire goddess? The saviour of Mantle? Where has she gone to now, when we most need her help?”

“What are you complaining about? That swallowed ship only had rich stuck up Atlesians who’d rather hold stuffy balls than invest in Mantle and make sure workers get decent conditions.”

“Shut up, you filthy Faunus.”

“Silence!” Yang bellows back. “No one insult the Faunus, and everyone, stay calm! Panic will only attract the Grimm. Blake, are you okay?”

The brunette says nothing, instead entwining her fingers within her partners’ firmly.

The two Huntresses have been posted there to ensure the safe landing of evacuation ships, following the first Mantas getting attacked by Mantle mobs. Robyn and the rest of her team are doing the same job at other landing points throughout the city on the ground. Yang and Blake don’t know if they’re faring any better, now that their communication server was taken down by Watts. The two girls can only hope.

“Then why aren’t the Grimm here? Why are they lurking around Atlas instead?” a stranger screams. “You and your token diversity partner, you’re lying to us! The General’s lying to us!”

“Yes, she’s right! Ironwood is hiding the truth from us. What is he doing up there alone, while all of us are kicked out of our homes?”

“He and Robyn Hill announced Atlas was gonna fall, but who’s making it fall now? Maybe the General has been plotting to do this the whole time.”

“In a way, yes,” Blake starts, “but only to slam Atlas through the whale to kill it and end the siege that’s been keeping all of us hungry and under attack for...”

But they’re not listening to her. They’re not listening any more, they’re yelling, pushing to see the airship that just landed right behind her, pushing, yelling till their voices meld into a growling, snarling, clawing mass, like the savage animals Blake’s kind had often been compared to. Yet the young huntresses have to stay composed and push the mobs back non-violently, resisting the reflex of using their weapons in their gun forms. 

“Stay back, please!” a familiar voice calls out, followed by a brief flash of green light. 

Within a protective dome of shimmering emerald that expands over the whole Manta, a recognisable teenager approaches, leading an elderly man down the ramp of the just-landed airship. The boy’s cane taps the metal of the ramp at each of his careful steps.

“... Oscar?!” Blake gasps while holding the ribbon of Gambol Shroud to impede a group of furiously pushing civilians. “You’re okay? Where have you been?”

“Maybe later?” Yang retorts. “Not to interrupt a teary-eyed reunion, but we’ve kinda got a lot on our hands.”

“Was that a hand pun? You’re really Yang, not an evil doppelganger,” the farm boy breathes in relief.

And it’s really Oscar, and it means so much the blonde can’t even start to process it. She thought he’d be gone forever thought they were only maintaining a pretense for Ruby’s sake dreaded the day she’d have to break the inevitable truth to her younger sister dreaded that even Ruby started to mentally give up on retrieving him being not so naive anymore after everything they’ve been through…

And yet he’s standing there, whole and unscathed, at least physically, and perhaps it means that hope’s not gone yet, that there is still a chance they can save everyone, or at least as many as they can, that they can keep moving forward without leaving friends and family behind, that there’s still people to selflessly assist the elderly even in these times, that there can be light even now... Right now, even the crowds have frozen for a few seconds, surprised by the show of lights that’s Oscar’s protective sphere. 

The protective sphere that quickly dissolves to reveal just how tattered Oscar’s outfit is underneath, as well as the barking mass of fluffy hair huddling against his legs. 

“Zwei??” Yang utters in disbelief. 

Not that she’s unhappy to see him, not that she’d ever be unhappy to see him, but… what on Remnant is the puppy doing here?

She never has time to figure out the answer. For at the corner of her vision, crimson volutes spiral out to form an all-too-familiar portal. 

“Raven,” she hisses. 

And raises Ember Celica to immediately shoot through the opening. 

Many things happen at once. 

Yang’s fingers fly to her mouth as she realises she shouldn’t have done that. 

The crowds charge again to see what happened, riled up by the shotgun’s sound. 

Not Raven, but her twin brother stumbles out of the portal, clutching a hurt shoulder with one hand and a recognisable artefact in the other. 

An artefact Yang’s only seen the shape of in Jinn’s projections, but that she recognises immediately as the Staff of Creation. 

An artefact that escapes his hand as the crowd almost tramples him, loudly rolling onto the asphalt floor and vanishing into a sea of angry legs. 

An artefact they’d come so close to retrieving so they could control Atlas’s fall, carry out their plan, and destroy the whale… only to lose it to an unleashed mob?

Among the chaotic cries, the stomping stampede, a faint woof echoes. And the next thing she knows, Zwei is proudly trotting through the ocean of feet toward Yang’s boots, the Staff of Creation proudly brandished in his mouth. 

“Good boy! You fetched the stick! Yes you got us the stick, yes you’re the best boy, yes Zwei is the best doggo ever!”

She gives him a good pat on the muzzle before picking up the relic, her uncle’s bloodstained fingers soon wrapping around the pole next to her hand. Oscar bends down to compliment and pet Zwei some more, and even the reluctant Blake looks like she might join in. 

“The General’s still waiting for you in Atlas,” the blonde says. “Pretty much everyone else has evacuated, but he’s still there waiting for the relic to be returned.”

“Jimmy, last man to abandon ship, as usual,” Qrow remarks, a familiar flame burning in his cynical crimson glare.

“I guess he knew you’d be back to give him… a hand?” she jokes nervously, trying to dispel the tension and failing.

“After the manicure I didn’t get to finish, that’s the least I could do. Good luck down here, kiddos.”

“And fly safely, Uncle Qrow.”

As he shapeshifts and flies away, the Staff in his talons, he can’t be sure which of the kids said that. They’re all a big family anyway.

* * *

“Artie?”

His nickname echoes hollowly down the phone line, for long, uncertain seconds. 

“Greetings, dearest Willow.” Arthur Watts finally responds. “I wonder where your manners are, after all these years. You were supposed to be the polite one.”

She lets out a small, relieved sigh. 

“It’s been a long time indeed,” she says. 

“How did you know you could still call me on this number?”

“Since you hacked the comms system of that whole group, I figured that in your hubris you would pick up whichever number in the group I called.”

Even without seeing him, she can guess the rictus at the corner of his moustache.

“Tsk, and don’t even dare to think that I don’t know James is also on the call with us. I can practically hear his machine-assisted breathing down the line. I know you two are leaguing up and planning something and hoping I won’t notice. So, Willie, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’ve noticed you haven’t hijacked any of the ships evacuating from Atlas, neither have you crashed the city to the floor by turning off the failsafes you designed yourself.”

“Are you… giving me ideas? I had an inkling yours was an unhappy marriage, but I didn’t realise it was so bad you wanted to crash it to the ground and bring all of Atlas down with it.”

“You’re not an idiot, Artie,” she sighs. “You’re many things, but not an idiot. You’d have thought of it and done it yourself, if there weren’t some good left in you. So that’s why I’m calling, because I think there’s still some good left in you.”

“And here I used to think our fearless leader wasn’t so naive,” Arthur sighs. “There was never any good or bad in me, because there was never good or bad at all, only what’s useful and what’s not useful to me. You’re out of touch with reality, Willow. And this is goodbye.”

Only continuous beeping echoes as he hangs up abruptly, and she pours herself another glass of whiskey. One of the finest whiskeys in all of the Schnee caves, because the whole manor and the whole city are going down anyway. And yet it doesn’t taste like it, it only reeks of fear. 

Whitley sits cross-legged on the grand staircase, watching his mother drink while waiting for one of the SDC airships to collect them for evacuation. For some reason that mostly escapes him, his mother insisted on giving this call before leaving, so now he has to wait while his home is crumbling around him. 

The Vault has started falling apart as the Staff was taken out, and everything built atop is collapsing progressively, but Whitley doesn’t know this. All he knows is that his home is crumbling around him. 

The old suits of armour tremble, rattle, clatter against the floor, against lustrous marble, against ornate carpets. An elaborate chandelier fell from its perch, lying grotesquely sideways beside the stairs. 

But Willow’s Scroll beeps again, and Arthur’s taunting voice speaks again as she picks up the call. 

“James, I’m glad you called both of us this time. So what is it now? A team reunion? The great team WILW back together, or whatever’s left of it? How poetic.”

“We owe Atlas all of that, Arthur,” the General replies. “The fame, the days of team Willow. We owe Atlas everything we ever had, everything we’ve ever been, even if Atlas may hate us now. And I know you want to do the right thing. So please, just now, do the right thing.”

“Look who’s talking,” Watts snorts. 

“On the contrary. I’ve done a number of wrong things, but it doesn’t excuse me from trying, and trying again until I get something right, and never stopping to try. My best men and closest friends reminded me of that.”

“Cut the sap, Jamie. Get to the point and tell me what’s the right thing you want me to do, so I can say no and cut the line and know all about your plans.”

“It won’t help you to know all about my plans. Qrow will return me the Relic, and I will use it to steer Atlas through the whale. There’s nothing that you alone can do against the two of us, not even counting Willow. We will take you down if you try to take the Relic from us.”

“Well, that’s all useful information. Shame I knew that due to that particular resonance the Vaults all have, that’s all over your call right now and that my algorithms successfully amplified. Her Majesty has been informed and will plan accordingly.”

James is shaking. They can all hear his metal parts clicking rhythmically, just like those empty suits of armour before they crumpled through the ground. But he doesn’t crumple, and when he next speaks his tone is raw, unbroken certainty. 

“My point is, if you try to steal the Staff from us, you will fail. If you try to stop us, you will fail. If you ever think of trying anything against us by harming anyone I care for on my watch, you will fail. I will make sure of it, and you will be tried for your treasons. But if you help us, that will be taken into consideration in your trial. And you know I’m a man of my word.”

“That I already knew,” Arthur breathes out. “So let’s get to the interesting part. What was that good deed you expected from me?”

James doesn’t answer. Instead, Willow does - with a question of her own. 

“You remember Limelight?”

Of course Arthur remembers. Who doesn’t - one of the famed attacks of team WILW. Shame that half of the members needed for that combination aren’t in this world anymore, and that Lazlo’s dazzling Semblance was what really gave the attack its name. 

But Watts understands the intent. After all, they know each other too well, they’ve known each other so well for so many years. Limelight is a call for attention… in this case, a call for help, a fuse in the night, a beacon in the darkness, a bottle to the sea.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he says before cutting the line again. 

In the silence, they can hear the mansion falling apart. 

The manor is the only home Whitley’s ever had, Atlas is the only world he’s ever known. 

He knows people say that home is about family, about those you care for. That it shouldn’t matter if Atlas is in the sky or on the ground, in one piece or in ruins, as long as the spirit of Atlas survives, its people, its memory. He knows all that, but right now all the universe he’s ever known is falling to pieces around him, and it feels like home.

* * *

“I must say, General Ironwood,” a female voice echoes icily in the emptiness of the Vault, “you’re more impressive in person. Even throughout millenia of life, I’ve rarely seen a Semblance like yours. The way you broadcast your pure emotions, your pure fear, loud enough to draw in all of my Grimm despite those hordes of terrified civilians you’re desperately trying to evacuate. You have no idea how much drawing from all of the negative emotions your Semblance radiates makes me stronger now I’m standing in the flesh behind you. I haven’t felt this powerful for centuries.”

A flicker of deep magenta magic pulses in her cadaveric palm, reflecting off her moon-shaded hair and highlighting the violet of her visible veins. 

“Greetings, Salem,” James says as he turns around. 

This time, he doesn’t even bother drawing his weapon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhh  
> I dunno what to say, I blame the comments for giving me ideas  
> Especially Flame for the dog and the stick. Best idea I ever heard. I wheezed so hard you have no idea  
> Ohh and Kirea who said ‘look all the bad guys joined the good side’ and my brain went what if one of the bad guys betrays them and they end up in the worst effing situation mwahahahaha  
> And Qorvid who inspired this whole arc… James is gonna save the day and Salem won’t even know what hit her… wait yeah she knows…. THE POWER OF GAY  
> You’re in for some mean twists next chapter (please don’t hate me I’m scared qkjdqksfdbzkjqf)  
> Stay safe xx


	27. (floating) like water lilies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when there was an update schedule and I actually stuck to it? Me neither.  
> Warnings: Blood, wounds, Apathy, mention of vomiting, Whitley, because he still gets his own warning, but I dunno if Salem does??

“Lilies are lovely flowers,” Ren shouts over the whistling winds and thrumming engines as they prepare to jump off the airship onto the tundra. “Surely a fitting name for your sister.”

It takes Clover a few seconds to process what he just said.

“Really?” the former operative yells back atop the background noise. 

They’re supposed to reconvene with Lily, Jaune, and a bunch of others out in the tundra, to organise this whole failsafe-of-the-failsafe operation and slow down the falling pieces of Atlas if it comes to fall. Not if, but when, they keep telling themselves, and yet it still feels surreal, leaving an awkward floating feeling in their stomachs.

“Sorry if that came off as inappropriate,” Ren backtracks. “I’m engaged and absolutely not interested in your sister in that way… I just thought it was socially expected to make small talk on plane rides to alleviate tension.”

“Oh, no need to apologise, I didn’t find that inappropriate. I just didn’t know.”

“...You didn’t know?” 

“I guess I knew back then, but when I woke up in hospital not even remembering my own name, the first thing that came to mind wasn’t to look up pictures of water lilies. And since then… well, a lot of stuff has come up.”

The Atlesian makes a mental note to search for water lily images when this is all over. _If_ this is all over, some time, some day.

At least, the younger Huntsman isn’t staring at him with pity written all over his face, and Clover can be grateful for that. Instead, he seems deep in thought, deep in memory.

“I had water lilies in my home village, all the way down the canals. The flowers are fragile and beautiful, golden in the middle, petals ranging from pale pink to white, curved like pieces of porcelain bowls. The leaves are round and flat, they float atop the water. The largest ones can support the weight of a small child, I’ve heard, but I’ve never dared try. I’m pretty sure Nora dared to, so you may wanna ask her about that. I was just too worried to ruin the flowers. I’ve never really understood how something can be so breakable and bear so much weight all at once.”

That’s a useful description, and now Clover feels ever so slightly less stupid for having no idea how the flower his sister’s named after looks. And that’s better than nothing. 

They’re approaching their landing point now, but there is this hesitation hanging in the air, as if the moment floats weightlessly, and Ren seems content recalling past memories that are clearly dear to him, so Clover doesn’t feel too bad pressing on further.

“... any chance you can tell me what anemones are like?” 

* * *

"Your Semblance is what's keeping me from killing you right now, quite ironically," Salem says. "If it weren't for your Semblance multiplying my power, I would've disposed of you. Cinder was right, that feeling of newly gained power never gets old. She was a useful henchwoman for a time, you had a run-in with her, I believe?"

The General tries to repress a shiver, but doesn't answer. His nervous fingers fidget with the contents of his pockets, with the metal rings in there that feel somewhat cool, reassuring, anchoring him. They’ve elected a home in his pocket for a while now, since that fateful night up in Amity, since the first night of many a stormy night. If only he could put on the rings without Salem noticing, and execute that contingency idea he had in mind. Or at least, try to. He curses the lack of precision of his prosthetic hand, and the ruined touch feedback of his burnt flesh hand for not being able to slip the rings on without being noticed, which would probably result in Salem snatching away the jewelry and his only anchor, his only hope to carry out his plan...

"You reek of fear, of cowardice, it's so pathetic it's almost impressive."

Above their heads, below their feet, all around Atlas, Grimm are growling, gnarling, swarming, screeching, surveying each entryway to the Vault and awaiting the Staff's return to steal it for their mistress. All young Grimm, born out of the power from Salem's hands that feeds off Ironwood's fully active Semblance, feeds off his darkest fears, his worst nightmares come to life.

"Yet here I am in front of you," he replies, "and I'm not going anywhere."

They both stand there in the darkness of the Vault that slowly crumbles around them. Both waiting for the relic, for a certain bird’s return. The Vault’s door, previously opened by Penny, remains ajar due to Watt’s precipitous escape with the hijacked Protector of Mantle. Stark white light radiates from the narrow opening, but neither Salem nor James stare at the white directly, because the white is almost blinding by contrast with the ambient blackness of the Vault, and their eyes have gotten accustomed to the dark by now.

"Because of illogical hope," she retorts. "Hope that the Staff will be safely returned to you, and that you'll be able to use it to drop Atlas onto my whale. Illogical hope that you'll manage to stop me from taking the Staff, as soon as it's brought back here. You'll find out in time that hope breeds fear, fear of the unknown, of the uncertain, of the odds that are overwhelmingly stacked against you, but only because you still care enough to try, enough to hope."

Ozpin used to say fear was the enemy of hope, of trust in oneself and in others, of everything good that ever remained in Remnant. James isn't sure he understands any more, nor that he wants to understand. 

Nothing follows but bone-chilling silence. 

"If I may," James finally speaks, "why do you still want the Staff? The Lamp was destroyed, so your hope to reunite the Relics to summon the gods is void and illogical now."

"The Lamp may still be re-awakened, if Arthur is to be believed. Besides, if I revealed you my secret plan, you would do everything in your power to foil it, not that it scares me, but it would be rather irksome."

She considers him like nothing more than a thorn in her foot, but an annoying one.

"I can relate to that," he deadpans shakily.

"Of course you can. Leadership, love, and loss makes us all the same. Some things never change, General. I've seen Kingdoms rise, Kingdoms fall throughout the centuries, the impending fall of Atlas will soon just be but another footnote in my memory. Because Remnant might change, but people don't change, and at the end of the day, my plans will remain unchanged, your will to stop me whatever my endeavours will never change."

"But you’re immortal… what will you do when you finally achieve your goal of wiping away humanity, or whichever is your goal now? What will you do alone in a barren, desolate world?"

"Bold of you to assume the world will be barren and desolate when I rebuild it from the ground up to my own image. I don't know, maybe play cards. Or write my memoirs. Or start a zoo. But I could return you the question, General. What will you do when it's all over, provided that you survive? What will you fill your days with, if there's no war against me keeping you occupied? Surely the prospect must be quite terrifying."

She's right, he hasn't really thought about it… or rather, hasn't dared think about it. He had no surviving family, little ties with surviving Academy teammates and comrades, little other interests or hobbies to distract from his one mission of stopping Salem, what he's trained and worked for all his life, what he'd sacrifice his body and soul for, or whatever's left of them.

"Recently, I figured out I quite enjoy gardening," he answers after a hesitation. "Probably we can make this work between us, find a place where I can garden, and Clover can fish. Clover enjoys fishing and cooking. And Qrow… maybe he likes baking? Particularly cookies?"

He remembers Clover mentioning Qrow’s cookies… and while the former Ace Op’s compliments probably have to do with the presence of raisins in said cookies, Ironwood can’t deny he’s intrigued. In the situation of extreme stress he’s in, he can do with some comfort food right now. Particularly a cookie.

Unfortunately, cookies aren’t very prominent in Qrow’s mind at the moment. Every time his wings beat, every time his heart beats, every time he draws a laboured breath, the Staff weighs heavier within his talons. He can’t morph the Relic in his transformation, unlike Harbinger, Ozpin’s cane, or his own clothes, so the artefact hangs precariously between his claws as he soars through the sky and toward Atlas, more and more unsteadily at each second as throbbing pain laces through his back and his heart pounds deafeningly at his eardrums. 

As he approaches the bottom of the Vault, his bird brain barely registers he’s never seen that many Grimm throughout his entire life and career as a Huntsman. The creatures are newborns, mewling and screeching like chicks awaiting their mother, so tightly grouped near the opening to the Vault that they’re merged into a mass of near-uniform black, and as his wings beat upward he struggles to distinguish a pallid Teryx’s claw lashing out at his feathers, a putrid Beringel’s muzzle opening to catch him between razor-sharp fangs. They’re attracted to the relic like moths to a flame, and all he can do is to cling to the Staff tighter and fly upward, always upward, through the blackness, through the night, through the storm. 

Battle is like a dance, like a map, it’s got rhythm, structure, paths and possibilities that sprawl out through space, trajectories he knows his weapon can carry out from practice, from planning. But this is no battle. He has nothing to fight back with but the sharpness of his puny beak and the beating of his bleeding wings. There are no paths he can follow but upward, upward always. Hoping the Grimm’s next strike his way won’t be fatal, hoping the Grimm’s next attack will leave him just unbroken enough to continue upward, hoping the next second won’t be the last. It’s like a tunnel with only one possible trajectory, except the only source of light is the pale blue of the Relic within his grip, drawing the soulless creatures flocking in. 

He doesn’t know exactly when it ends. When he finally makes it all the way out of the tunnel, up the shaft, into the Vault itself. At this point, his bird brain only knows pain and exhaustion and pain and too much pain. He doesn’t know when or how a Seer’s tentacles latched around his feathers, his talons, his bleeding back to half-drag, half-pin him down onto the narrow walkway amidst the void, at the Vault’s center. 

The Grimm’s claws are biting into his skin as the boneless appendages wrap tighter and tighter around his limbs, attempting to pry the relic away from his talons… And he doesn’t know what happens first, his vision blurring amidst the semi-darkness of the Vault as his breathing turns more and more laboured, or the Staff clattering onto the floor as his wary claws are forced to release it, clattering quietly, too quietly, as if distantly, too distantly, and the world feels like vanishing away into the obscurity…

He doesn’t know how or where he finds the energy to go on. 

But he does. 

Because he must.

And because James is staring down at him and the Staff he brought back, staring at him with admiration and respect and care… because of course he is, of course James would be waiting for him, trusting him, believing in him even though that’s illogical, for what is love, if not illogical…

But the General stiffens as he detects the faint glimmer of the relic as it rolls toward the side of the walkway, and starts to slip off the edge into the endless, dark void. He springs forward, only for Salem’s Grimm to sprout out of the ground and immobilise him with their tentacles. He hears Qrow let out a broken, painful caw as he turns back into his human form, falling to the floor flat on his stomach with a fit of coughing as the Seer can’t support with his sudden increase in weight. 

There’s a flash of steel, a sharp clang as metal hits metal - and the next fraction of a second, Harbinger’s scythe blade impales the walkway, stopping the Staff from sliding any further just before it can plummet down into the darkness. 

Qrow still clings onto his weapon, while wiping off the blood coughed out onto his lips, wiping off the red contrasting starkly against his pearly white skin, and James’s heart clenches at the sight. But his free hand still swings Harbinger, drawing the relic closer to the General and away from the creatures of darkness. And even as Qrow struggles to get up, having to lean onto the pole of his scythe for support, he doesn’t stop fighting, can’t stop won’t stop will never stop, because that’s who he is as a Huntsman, as a person, pushing the Grimm away even if just for an extra second, for a chance for James to reach over and grab the Staff…

“You both care too much, even if that’ll lead you nowhere,” Salem comments icily. “Because you can’t win.”

Qrow swivels around, and James can read the shock and recognition in his eyes, but even that won’t wash away the pained rictus that distorts his features. 

“Salem, finally...” the scythe-wielder exhales.

“Fortunately, when it comes to caring too much, I know exactly the remedy against that,” she continues, sweeping a wide arc with both her hands.

James looks around - and the Grimm growing from the floor are nothing like those he’s seen before. Their lanky limbs, their scrawny spines are bent at impossible angles… or rather, impossible curves, for everything about them is soft, boneless, and they levitate lethargically instead of moving to attack, despite Ironwood’s Semblance drawing them in. They’re humanoid, too humanoid for comfort, too humanoid save for those dead, glassy eyes that don’t carry any spark, any hope, any soul within them. And that vision alone, the vision of those necks that twist all the way around as slack jaws hang open as if soundlessly cackling, should make the General’s hair stand on end. But even his hair is suddenly too tired to stand on end. 

Too tired to even care.

Too tired to even care when some Grimm tentacle picks up the Relic and hands it to Salem. Too tired to hear the roars as she creates a sizable winged Beringel to fly away from Atlas with the Staff. Too tired to truly register it’s too late now, that he’s failed to defend what he’d given his life, his body, his soul to protect, that everything his life was meant to culminate towards is over, illogical, and void, that there might as well be nothing left of him now, that he might as well have never been born, now that the Staff resides within Salem’s pale palm.

Too tired to care when Qrow wriggles weakly on the floor without managing to catch the Staff as it moves past him, without bothering to collect his fallen weapon or even wipe the dripping blood off his chin, because Qrow’s too tired too. Too tired to care as the shifter’s eyes lay wide open, as crimson and lifeless as the Grimm’s, with only the dimmest flame flickering in them: fear. Recognition, and fear. 

“The Apathy,” Qrow murmurs, leaving James to wonder if the shifter’s encountered them before on his countless travels and missions. 

And the scythe-wielder’s too tired to even shiver, but James can still see the pure terror in his vermillion glare, the primal, crass fear. And it hurts, it hurts to see the Huntsman, the unstoppable Huntsman he’d come to know and love, fall prey to his fear, to the ghosts of his past that came back to haunt him. It hurts, to have vanquished villains and monsters, to have shot a Leviathan down the throat, killed a giant winger Beringel with its own feathers, to have faced Salem eye to eye, but not to be able to save Qrow from his worst nightmares. The General wishes he could protect him, take his hand, tell him it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, but he’s too tired even for that. And that’s something, it makes James feel something, and that’s more than nothing.

It gives him the strength to draw both his guns and shoot. His arms, both flesh and metal, are heavier by the second, his sight hazy, his aim unfocused. And scoffing wordlessly, Salem deflects each bullet by twirling the Staff of Creation with ease, each shell rebounding uselessly against the gold metal. Until a spray of Gravity Dust erupts from his other gun, and she blocks it just as effortlessly - only for the Staff to emit bright purple instead of blue. And as a faint resonance vibrates through the air, basking in magenta light, everything levitates. 

The Apathy, their disarticulate bodies floating away as if lulled by a sudden tide. James, clinging to Due Process, Qrow, barely even still holding onto Harbinger. Salem, her now empty hand reaching out as the Staff’s sudden burst of energy sends her flying backward. 

The world hangs in mid-air, if only for fleeting moments. For fleeting moments, the General propels himself using the recoil of his weapon, reaches for the Staff, and shoots another round of Gravity Dust to send himself flying in the other direction, grabbing Qrow’s arm on the way through the Vault’s still-open door. Away from the dark, into the light, into the white.

There’s so much white that it hurts the eye.

So much white that it takes them too long, way too long, to get accustomed. 

To distinguish the strange winter wonderland that’s the world behind the door, impossibly endless and wild and natural to live within the real space of the Vault. 

To their nostrils wafts the scent of icy pine trees, their charcoal-black branches slumbering under thick blankets of crestfallen snow. Under their feet, spreading infinitely through the seemingly immense forest, lies snow just as white, just as pristine, so pristine it physically hurts to even take a single step. From wayward branches, stalactites drip, loaded with crystallised droplets that glisten like pearls, their iridescent reflections twinkling brighter than stars in the mysterious white lighting from above. 

“We’ve found the witch and the wardrobe, where’s the lion?” Qrow yawns as he slumps into the snow, staining the pure white with the red of his wounds. 

“You can still feel them, can’t you?”

The Apathy. They may be in another, whiter dimension, but the utter exhaustion still weighs upon their souls, still drains their minds of the energy needed to move forward. It’s only… a little less overbearing now, and maybe they can work with that, with a short reprieve, with a little time and space to breathe.

“Yeah, but it’s not as… inescapable,” the shifter tries to formulate, and James understands immediately. “Do you think that you could counteract them, you know… with your Semblance...”

The General gives a brief, tired chuckle. This makes sense, somehow: if his negative emotions strengthen Salem and her creatures, his positive feelings broadcasted to their utmost point might have the opposite impact. But James isn’t in here to formulate hypotheses, he has to find how to reposition the Staff in its original location for it to support the weight of Atlas...

“It’s as if I asked you to use your Semblance for good luck,” he sighs.

“You’re somehow saying that it could work.”

“You really sound like Clover sometimes.”

At those words, Qrow grabs his hand and drags him down onto the snow, before pulling him into a bruising kiss. It’s brief, too brief in Qrow’s injured state, but Qrow’s lips are chapped and his mouth tastes like heaven, whether that exists or not, James can’t care less. And that’s all that they need and so much more than they deserve and then some, and enough to make the world vanish around them, to make this dimension and all others, to make the snow’s stark white and the Vault’s pitch black and all of Remnant around them cease to matter, and then some.

It’s brief, but it leaves both of them breathless and dizzy as the shapeshifter rests his feathery head of hair into the crook of James’s neck, drawing shallow breaths as he mumbles by way of explanation:

“For luck.”

“Thanks, we’ll need that...” the headmaster pants. 

And dusting the snow off what seems like an inconspicuous, if rather large rock, the General finds deep purple: the crystal of pure Gravity Dust that the Staff has been amplifying for all these years, keeping the whole city of Atlas afloat. Lifting the Relic high overhead, James plants it head first into the stone.

Immediately, shimmering pixels flicker off and back on, as if disturbing the hologram that’s the world around them and revealing the tangle of wires and circuits that lies beneath. They catch the briefest glimpse of that marvel of Atlesian technology designed to harvest the Staff’ energy to support the city’s weight… before a burst of light becomes everything, and a wave of overwhelming energy pushes them out through the door, back into the Vault’s darkness and into the clutches of Salem and her Apathy.

There might be even more of those Grimm than before, Salem might have been creating more in the meantime. Or they might have grown more potent feeding off of Ironwood’s dark emotions. James doesn't know, and they can’t care any more. 

James can’t care as Salem glides toward them, toward the still-open door to the Vault. They’re too weak and can’t care enough to even stand up and face her anyway. 

James can’t care as all the efforts and sacrifices they’ve made throughout the decades are about to crumble down to dust, each of their nightmares, each of their dreams rendered moot by this one failure to stop Salem, because they couldn’t care less right now. They’re way too tired for that, sleep seems like a much more alluring option than hoping, than caring, than fearing, then trusting. 

James can’t care when he catches that glare of hurt, of betrayal deep in Qrow’s crimson irises, at the sight of the General’s boot feebly kicking the door to the Vault, before Salem’s face as she reaches for the Relic, forever shut.

* * *

“Ivy told me to give you some raisins,” Lily says, drawing a crumpled paper bag from a well-hidden pocket of her skirt. 

Her eyes are a lot like her brother’s, but her slender silhouette, her sweet scent still feel foreign as she embraces him. There’s faint recollections somewhere at the back of his mind, but she was so much younger in his memories. He can’t tell if he forgot, or if they just haven’t seen each other in recent years.

“Ivy’s must be becoming more and more like Ma every day,” Clover reflects hesitantly, “sending me stuff all the way from Argus while I could be buying the exact same in the market here.”

“But with the embargo and the siege?”

“Raisins can be stored forever, so that’s not as much of a problem as with other things. If we lose this war and the Grimm wipe out all human life in Atlas and Mantle, archeologists who stumble upon this deserted place hundreds of years from now will still be able to find the raisins, and even enjoy them.”

“No one enjoys raisins save from you, Clo,” she giggles.

“Raisins are useful for cooking,” Ren comments, staring away from the siblings and into the distant sky.

Apart from conversation and raisins, they don’t have much on their hands until Atlas falls out of the sky, and they have to pick up the pieces.

* * *

“I thought you wanted to use the Staff to drop Atlas on my whale,” Salem comments, inspecting her fingernails with sudden interest. “But I can’t see the Winter Maiden anywhere here, and without her you can’t re-open the Vault to access the Staff, so it looks like you’ve shot your own plan in the foot. You think it saves you this time, but Arthur can still track down the Winter Maiden’s location and puppet her all the way back here, and by the time she returns, judging by the number of Apathy I created here, there won’t be much left of either of you.”

James says nothing, he’s too tired for that. Qrow says nothing. But he looks hurt. Not just because of the blood, the life leaking out of his wounds, but because of the betrayal. After Ozpin concealed the truth from his most loyal lieutenants, after Lionheart sided with the enemy out of fear, it must hurt to see James… just give up. Just give up on his plans, his dreams, on everything that made him James, just give up on ending Salem and the Grimm, just turning the page over and slamming the door shut. Just give up on that one chance that they had to turn the tide, to use the Staff to destroy the whale and end the siege.

And laying there limply, powerlessly, incapable to do anything about it, hurts Qrow just as much. Watching James lose himself, lose everything that used to be James within a fraction of a second because of some stupid soul-sucking Grimm, his passion, his determination, his heart, everything that used to be that man Qrow loved, hurts. It hurts so damn much. Even with the wariness, with the heaviness of his eyelids and his soul, Qrow can feel it. 

The pain, the overbearing pain rattling the inside of each of his bones, the pain that becomes the world.

And James knows it hurts. 

And he wishes he could tell Qrow. About his strategy, about all those sleepless nights he’s been thinking about what to do if Salem came in person to steal the Staff. About all those nightmares, all those fears that kept him awake, about the contingency plan he designed to that purpose. About the cold, hard, steady rings in his pocket he wishes he could take out because they’re central to his plan, but he’s too tired right now.

He’s even too tired to explain to Qrow.

To explain that he had to make everyone believe, Qrow, Clover, all the Ace Ops and all their allies, Watts, Salem, and the rest of her followers, that the end goal was to drop Atlas on the whale. So that Salem wouldn’t expect it or be able to counter it when he…

If he...

Because he’s too tired right now, he can’t be sure he’ll manage…

If he could just…

He closes his eyes. 

He hadn’t realised how sleep-deprived he’s been, and no, being poisoned and staying in a hospital bed doesn’t count, and a good nap seems more appealing than ever right now.

But he can’t fall asleep. Cannot should not must not _will not_ fall asleep. 

Instead, he remembers the taste of Qrow’s lips against his. He remembers the day he heard Clover would live after being nearly killed by Tyrian. He remembers Clover’s genuine laugh every time he won at cards, because of course he always did. He remembers Qrow waiting at the window in bird form after James lost half his body, those red eyes watching carefully and hoping no one will notice. 

But James noticed. And that makes a difference.

Not a huge difference. Not a considerable difference. Only the tiniest of differences, the smallest of sparks, just enough to ignite his Semblance and broadcast his positive emotions. 

The Apathy don’t even stagger in their levitating condition. They don’t even drift away, let along vanish into soot. Salem tenses surprise at her reserve of power feeding off his dark feelings suddenly depleting, but it doesn’t impede her, and she was planning to leave anyway. 

But it’s enough to allow James to take a small, shiny ring out of his pocket. And that’s better than nothing. 

Grimm tentacles pin him down immediately, and the trinket tumbles to the floor. But Qrow’s keen eye for shiny things takes over, and the shapeshifter grabs it before anyone else can move. 

If he weren’t so tired, James would have smiled. Even out of his bird form, even wounded, exhausted, and on the brink of death, the scythe-wielder’s appreciation for bright trinkets never changes, and maybe Salem’s right, sometimes people never change, and that’s for the better…

“Jimmy, I know we might not have that much time left, but isn’t this the worst possible time to propose?” Qrow cocks a brow, inspecting the object between his fingers.

With Salem and her Apathy as the only witnesses, the General supposes Qrow’s not wrong.

Stifling a yawn, James has just enough strength to lean over and murmur an answer into Qrow’s ear.

Vermillion eyes inspect the metal ring between his fingers with wary curiosity. A blast of Salem’s magic threatens to knock the jewellery out of his hand, and he groans as he tumbles to the floor inelegantly. 

“Hey Sal,” the shapeshifter groans, “can’t you at least leave a guy some time to propose? Wouldn’t that be fair since you and Oz at least had the chance to get engaged before shit went down?”

She hisses sharply, but doesn’t make another move, and doesn’t say anything. 

James doesn’t need to say anything, either. Only to revel in the soft, tired touches as their foreheads rest against one another, in the feel of his skin against Qrow’s as they clumsily adjust the rings onto the Huntsman’s long, pale fingers, and the shapeshifter understands. 

They don’t need to say anything. Verbal communication hasn’t always been the best between them anyway, but now they know each other too well to require words. James knows Qrow recognises those rings, that he’s seen identical ones on Watt’s fingers when they took the Lamp from him, and the corvid’s keen eyes for shiny things couldn’t possibly miss that. James knows that Qrow can’t know that the General collected this particular set of rings in Amity after his fight with Arthur, those very rings that were used to control everything about the floating, Dust-loaded colosseum. 

Qrow can’t know, but Ironwood knows he trusts him anyways, and their fingers are interwoven now, as if to never let go.

They don’t need to say anything, only lower their intertwined hands to the floor. 

Atlas does not fall. Does not, cannot, and must not fall. Instead, with a low, soft grumble, Amity Colosseum drops out of the sky and straight onto the whale.

It takes Salem a few seconds to realise what happened. 

A few seconds to levitate herself away and call upon her Grimm to fly her back to her base, left largely unguarded, as fast as possible.

It wouldn’t have worked if Salem hadn’t stationed herself and all of her Grimm around Atlas to prevent the city’s fall onto her base and collect the Staff, leaving the whale vulnerable.

It wouldn’t have worked because the Grimm army, or failing that, the whale itself would have swatted the colosseum away like a harmless fly if Amity hadn’t been loaded with so much Dust for the supposed communication tower launch all the way into the upper atmosphere.

So much Dust that the ensuing explosion reduces the giant cetacean Grimm into a single cloud of soot amidst Solitas’s blue sky. 

“Who’s the coward now, Sal?” Qrow sighs. “Not even staying to fight it till the end?”

Even in their infinite exhaustion, they can’t repress a shiver at the sight of one of the Apathy’s neck writhing into sudden, broken angles before snapping open. Through the orifice, a puff of darkness emerges, upon which Salem’s recognisable hologram erupts like a grisly second head to respond to the bird man’s accusation.

“Why should I show you mercy and end you quickly, rather than leave you at the hands of my Apathy after what you did to my beautiful whale? And why should I show you mercy in killing you quickly, when I could annihilate those you love most and leave you alive yet powerless to watch?”

“... Clover,” James and Qrow realise in unison as the projection vanishes as fast as it appeared.

* * *

“Yes, I’m okay, I swear,” Ex-Operative Ebi assures down his Scroll as his sister and everyone else stare in puzzlement. “Anything new on your side, James? Apart from huge fragments of the Amity colosseum falling out of the sky where there used to be a giant whale and toward Mantle?”

“What, you’re just peachy? You scared us for nothing, you absolute… oof!”

At the other end of the line, a rustle of fabric echoes as if a body just hit the floor, followed by a clang of metal that must be James trying to cushion Qrow’s fall. 

“Gods, Qrow, are you all right?” Clover shrieks. 

“Qrow suffered blood loss, but it’s not life-threatening,” James answers down the line, sounding more exhausted than usual, which is a non-trivial achievement in Clover’s book. “We’re... both immensely relieved to hear that you’re unharmed.”

“But… did Qrow just pass out?” Clover worries.

“Nah… I’m awake now… gotcha, huh? I’m… not that easy to get rid of… uh...” the scythe-wielder summarises elegantly before trailing off once more. 

“... I’m afraid Qrow just lost consciousness again. So I should tend to his wound before he wakes up and yells at me.”

“Good luck, James. And well done for dropping Amity. Now if there’s nothing more that’s urgent, we have Mantle to shield from falling debris on our side.”

“Clover, I am confident you will all do well.”

As he hangs up, James feels his Semblance faltering as his Aura flickers. As his emotional projection weakens he can almost sense the temperature dropping in the Vault and icy sweat beading his brow as the Apathy inch ever so slightly closer. But he can’t give up right now, because Qrow’s limp form is also growing too cold, slowly, inexorably between his arms, and he can’t let that happen…

On the scythe-wielder’s back, the gash is thin, but long, and potentially deep even though the shifter’s heart, lungs, or spine don’t appear affected. Ironwood has to stop the bleeding. And the most efficient way is to cauterise the wound. With shaky fingers, he activates the Fire Dust function on his prosthetic arm, wincing as he cranks up the highest setting and almost-overbearing heat saturates his steel side. His teeth clench at the mere, sickening sound of burning skin and flesh - and he can’t help but flinch when the pain causes Qrow to jolt awake, coughing out smoke and blood. 

“You… had the nerve… to use… the hot water bottle function...” Qrow stutters, convulsing in ache.

“To its full power?” the General finishes for him. “I believe so.”

“I very vaguely recall Fire Dust to come in handy against the Apathy...”

"Very vaguely?"

James needs more certainty than that, but seeing that's the best they've got, they may as well try. He fidgets some more with the heat settings of his metal arm, as a sickening scent of burnt fabrics, burnt skin, burning _everything_ wafts through the air, drawing a heavy groan from Qrow.

"Jimmy… I think I'm about to barf…"

He presses a palm to his stomach from his reclined position on James's lap.

"I would appreciate it if you could spare my uniform in the process. White stains very easily, you know."

Qrow tries to chuckle, and promptly winces at the pain that elicits. The General isn't this nonchalant about life-and-death matters usually, no doubt the effect of the still surrounding Apathy.

"We both know you have more than enough identical copies of this uniform… but actually I feel like I'm gonna pass out again…"

Even nested in the warmth of Ironwood's arms, Qrow can't stop quaking, hazy crimson eyes shakily flitting over the ghastly silhouettes of the Grimm around them, only kept at bay by the incandescent heat of James's prosthetic, almost shining like a candle in the dark.

Carefully holding his Dust-loaded arm away from Qrow, the General softly runs his human fingers through the shapeshifter's feathery hair. And the gentle touch, the gentlest of too tired touches is an unbreakable promise, an infinite oath he can only hope the scythe-wielder will hear and understand.

"Hey, pretty bird. Don't worry. I've got you."

* * *

"Ready?" Jaune mutters nervously, setting a hand on Lily's shoulder and another on May's. 

His Aura entwines with both of theirs, rippling out through their connected limbs to boost their Semblances and project out a force field of anti-gravity that could catch the piece of Dust and concrete falling at full speed toward Mantle. Ren’s Semblance conceals them from Grimm, not that it’s the top priority, but every bit of help counts.

If he focuses, he can see the coalescent glimmer of their combined abilities - May’s force field, Lily’s gravity cancellation, and his own amplification that helps their power reach higher, further, all the way to Mantle, to the fast-descending fragment of Amity tumbling towards it, accumulating such speed that the air around it sparks ablaze. 

Reach further, higher still as they push their Semblances to their breaking point. 

As from the corner of his eye, Jaune sees Clover try to flick his lucky pin to add his own ability to the mix. And fail, remembering the trinket’s now with Qrow rather than on the ex-Ace Op’s lapel.

Lily glances at him reflexively as he moves, fidgeting with the hem of her skirt, and the force field flinches. Doesn’t shrink, doesn’t drop, doesn’t collapse, but flinches.

And the debris falls down ineffectively, storming through the sky on its burning path toward defenseless Mantle. 

And then the Dust catches fire. Falling faster each second, the whole fragment catches fire. Falling every second, falling ever faster. 

Until it stops. 

Until the flames are smothered, golden reds meeting stark silvers. For the debris is surrounded by phantomatic winged Beringels, translucent yet supporting the full weight and slowing it progressively. Soon, the summoned winged primate is rejoined by Manticores. By Nevermores. By Lancers. Wings flapping in mid-air to counteract the plummeting pieces’ acceleration.

Jaune breathes deeply. The Schnees are coming to their help. The Schnees are saving Mantle - or at least, trying to. And every bit of trying counts.

It’s not enough to annihilate the threat. It’s not enough to shatter the fragments, not even to But it might be enough to give them the reprieve that they need, that they so desperately need.

“Hey, kids. I know you can do it,” Clover murmurs. 

“Be a bit more convinced and cheerful with those kids, will you?” Maria grumbles from the pilot seat in the airship that dropped Jaune and Lily off, tapping her goggles until they can focus on the tumbling debris above Mantle.

“I’m the same age as you are, we were on the same team, remember?” May chirps between gritted teeth, still focused on her Semblance as her hands glow blue. 

“You always say so, Clo. With a bit of luck, nothing’s impossible...” his younger sister voices hesitantly.

Clover recalls he doesn’t really know her. Or at least, not any more. He doesn’t really know what she’s been through since they’ve been apart, he remembered her as a pre-teen and now she’s as grown as Jaune and the rest of Qrow’s kids. He doesn’t really know how she fared away from his luck, away from the spectre of his Semblance and how it 

He doesn’t really know how he can help her. 

But he must try, because the fate of Mantle depends on it. And every slightest bit of trying counts.

“No,” Clover speaks softly, solemnly. “Not today. Today I’m not here to bring you luck, because even without it I’m certain you’ll succeed on your own and save us all. I’m just here, and I came all the way out here, just to remind you that you can do it.”

He sets a hand on her shoulder, and closes his eyes. He can sense her closing her eyes too, letting her Semblance radiate out. It’s like when the siblings were trying to fall asleep, back in Argus, cuddling in the old, thick blankets of their bedroom while trying to ignore yelling parents and thundering storms by focusing on the warmth of each other, on the breathing of each other. It’s no different… Clover’s not sure if that’s a memory, or if he just invented it. But he doesn’t care. 

At the moment, he can’t care less.

Because when he opens his eyes, everything is floating, as weightlessly as lilies atop the water’s surface. 

* * *

Whitley wonders what they’re doing that for. 

Winter and Weiss are Huntresses, their barbaric job is to fight the Grimm… but why go to such lengths to try and save Mantle? Especially when all the odds are so strongly stacked against their favour? Especially when they’re bound to make only the slightest of differences, if any difference at all? 

But Mother… Mother’s Atlesian, why would she care for Mantle? Why would she send her summons so far, at the risk of her own Aura? Home is still in Atlas, home will be fine when they return, it has to be because that’s the only place that’s ever felt like home to Whitley. 

They’re in an airship right now, a SDC airship with the fancy gray banners trailing behind them. Willow and Whitley in a separate plane, Weiss and Winter in another since their departure was delayed by some Huntress matter or other. The wind outside is too loud to think properly, and it definitely doesn’t feel like home. The house staff is there too, leaving some space for the white-haired family members to breathe, but it’s still pretty claustrophobic in the evacuation transport. 

Some aerial Grimm flutter around the vessel, but show no signs of attacking. Whitley’s reassured - the Ace Ops decided to unlock his Aura during their babysitting session, so he feels ever so slightly protected right now. If the soulless creatures rip their airship in half, there’s little good some Aura can do - but the reassurance makes him a little less afraid. 

Fortunately, most everyone around them isn’t that afraid either. Rather, they’re in awe. 

By the sight of one Willow Schnee, straining to her utmost point to control myriads of summons all the way on the other side of Mantle, to catch each of the dislocating pieces of debris and heave them upward. By the sight of the Great Summoner, that most haven’t seen in action since at least the days of team WILW’s Vytal festivals, surrounded by elaborate spinning glyphs that light up each crease, each wrinkle of her face as her frail, weathered shoulders seemingly support the whole weight of the world.

Until Weiss and Winter join in, and Whitley can recognise their summons after having watched many of their videotaped fights, at tournaments or otherwise, on his Scroll while hiding from Father’s glare. There must be a reason, he thinks to himself. There must be a reason why they care about Mantle, why they care so much.

Most everyone isn’t that afraid right now. Instead, they’re cheering. Because although Whitley can’t see it clearly through the windows, it appears that Willow and her girls’ power slowed down the debris ever so slightly, before running out just as the team of Huntsmen on the ground used some kind of Semblance trick to finish the work the Schnees started and save Mantle. Whitley isn’t cheering, everything outside is too loud and inside is too silent, like a cage.

As her Aura shatters off her body, he doesn’t even have time to rush to support her before her house personnel surround her completely, helping her back to her feet. 

Every bit of help counts. Even though that’s not enough when a blast of pure purple tears a gap on the ship’s window, aiming squarely at Mrs. Schnee. A blast of purple _magic_ \- Whitley can’t tell why, but he’s intuitively sure. Not that he has time to see the ancient, levitating being in the sky who cast that spell before she retreats into a mass of swarming Grimm. Not that he can understand that her act was a revenge on the General, inflicting him the same fate she’d suffered many a century ago by ending a loved one. 

Not that he has time to process any of that, before the blast’s energy hurls her stumbling through the tattered window and into the void, sharp shards of broken glass clawing at her wrinkled skin. 

Not that he has time to see her bleed - at least, not yet. 

For she doesn’t bleed. She shines. 

Glyphs sprout out of Whitley’s hands like immaterial flowers, surrounding her like a cage, keeping her from falling like a buoy, protecting her like armour, like a way too fragile excuse for armour. More like flower petals, already wilting flower petals. Light sprouts out of him, but it’s too late. The magic has already done its irreversible damage. Light saturates each of his tears as they spill down his youthful face, along his rounded chin, and it’s too late. When he attempts to scream, only silence comes out, silence and light, more light, more glyphs, but it’s too late. It’s too late, too little, too late, but he tries. 

And every smallest bit of trying counts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: there will be no more crying, only fluff  
> Also me: *writes this chapter*  
> Next chapters will be a lot of cuddles, stay tuned xx


	28. Like snow melting in the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters left to go! This one’s not as endless as the previous ones, but it’s a wild ride nonetheless, hope y’all enjoy  
> Warnings: hospitals, mentions of injuries, mention of reproductive organs (just named, no graphic description; I was going to cut that upon editing but the people on Discord coerced me into keeping it. I’m sorry y’all. If you wanna coerce me into putting stuff in the fic, go to the Discord server, or leave a comment, I luvv comments)

It’s too little, too late. But eventually help arrives. 

The fastest Atlesian military airships are rushed to all corners of Remnant, bringing to Solitas all those willing to help. Salem is nowhere to be found, it’ll take her time to reconstitute a whale or a Grimm army of that size. So while recent happenings may be counted as a victory, Atlas and Mantle are both still infested by her creatures, from giant Megoliath nests festering outside the city walls to newborn Grimm spawned from the grisly drippings of the whale when it collapsed into oblivion. Huntresses and Huntsmen remain busy at work, and any help they can get from comrades travelling in from other Kingdoms is more than welcome. 

In this whirlwind of events, the embargo and martial law were lifted, but in the current climate of uncertainty, relief, weightlessness, that comes more like an afterthought. Headmistress Goodwitch of Beacon Academy flew over to oversee wall repairs, as well as assist with the heavily scarred Atlas infrastructures in the aftermath of Amity’s explosion - few Atlesian lives were harmed thanks to evacuation, but material damage is substantial. There’s no way she can fix everything on her own, but every little bit of help counts. 

Every little bit of help counts, so the General and Council decided the energy of the Staff should be harvested in situations like this. Immediately, a plane is sent to Patch to collect the still injured Winter Maiden. Atlas is to be lowered as softly as possible to the Solitan ground next to Mantle, so that the Relic’s power can be used for other purposes. 

James isn’t too sure how he and Qrow survived the Apathy. He has the vaguest, most obscured memories of everything on fire, boneless black limbs on fire, grinning skulls on fire, his prosthetic arm pulsing with fire and pain. He has the faintest recollection an airship eventually arrived to collect them, maybe a flash of bright silver, he isn’t even sure how much that helped. But what he knows is that he and Qrow made it out safely, and that’s all that matters. 

The shapeshifter’s in a hospital bed, despite his protests, so they can tend to his back injury courtesy of his sibling as well as that bullet wound in his shoulder caused by Yang accidentally shooting at him, that he insisted wasn’t important because the projectile _went all the way through and didn’t even get stuck in the flesh_. That elicited a deep, exasperated groan from Ironwood, and a couple of hours, several stitches, and a blood transfusion later, Jimmy found himself dozing off in a chair by Qrow’s bedside. 

James still needs to catch up on sleep. Their run-in with the Apathy didn’t help. Apparently, Qrow also needs to catch up on sleep. He’s lying on his side amongst the fresh-smelling hospital sheet, eyelids shut and features completely worn out.

“Is Qrow pretending to be asleep right now?” Clover whispers as he quietly steps into the room. 

“Nope,” the shifter mutters before burying his face into the pristine white pillow and closing his eyes again.

“Okay?” the former soldier whispers hesitantly.

Entering on tiptoes, Clover closes the door behind him as he walks around Qrow’s bed and casts a brief, fond glance on the shapeshifter’s sleepy form. Clover’s fingers find Qrow’s hand against the crumpled sheets and caress up the line of his veins across his pulse point, relieved by the reinvigorated heartbeat and healthier warmth of the pale skin.

“Qrow needs some rest, it’s probably best if we let him sleep for now,” James quietly clarifies.

“You also look like you need some rest. And a hug.”

Before the General can protest, strong arms hold him in an inescapable embrace, not that he’d ever want to escape, or ever want to be anywhere else, do anything else than recline into Clover’s steady, secure warmth, and wish for right here, right now to last forever.

“Thank you, Clover,” he murmurs, nuzzling into the younger man’s chest.

“Shouldn’t you go home and get a nap? I can stay here and update you on how Qrow’s doing...”

“I prefer to stay around, Pietro knows I’m here and will come find me as soon as he’s got news on the evolution of Willow’s status. As of now no one can visit her yet.”

“Yeah… I’ve seen Winter and her siblings waiting out in the corridor on my way here. They look absolutely exhausted, like they've been there all night, just like _you’ve_ been waiting all night. Just please consider that you waiting here won't help change anything, so you should better go get some rest. I can take over. I can wait here.”

Of course James waiting at the hospital won’t help much. Maybe Clover sitting here instead, with all his luck, could make a difference. But maybe, just maybe James wants to be the first one to know, the first one to see her, even if her situation’s out of his control, because she matters, and he wants to be selfish just this once.

“If you keep waiting and worrying any more, your hair will turn as white as the Schnees’,” Clover teases softly, depositing a soft kiss atop Jimmy’s well groomed raven strands interspersed with increasingly silver streaks. “Not that I wouldn’t love your hair anyway. I’ve noticed since the day I’ve met you just how nice and soft your hair is, and I’ve always wanted to do this…”

Leaning down to demonstrate, he brushes back that long, lone lock of wavy dark hair on Ironwood’s forehead, feeling the General’s metal hand reach for his fingers but not swat them away, instead holding them in place, holding the moment in place. Clover’s heartbeat accelerates as he bashfully stares into Jimmy’s deep blue eyes, and suddenly he remembers he’s always wanted to kiss that shiny metal band above James’s brow, and suddenly he gathers the courage to act on his impulses. It’s a brief burst of courage, and he must seize his chance before it’s too late. 

Cold steel feels smooth and polished under his timid lips. And then, warmth replaces metal as Ironwood’s lips meet his. His hand still stroking James’s hair moves naturally toward the back of the General’s head, pulling him closer to deepen the kiss, and steel fingers cupping his jaw with surprising gentleness send shivers down Clover’s spine. Freezing shivers, burning shivers, as fresh metal digits map Clover’s jawline, as a skilful tongue probes at the heat of his mouth. When they eventually part for air, the look in their eyes is unmistakable, and only evidence hangs in the electric air between them - the only thing they want is to do it again.

“Do you realise we could have been doing this for such a long time?” Clover sighs, an easy smile on his lips.

James drags him in for another kiss before responding, but this time his lips are ever so slightly more hesitant, almost bitter even though their touch remains infinitely sweet, and ultramarine eyes avert teal when the two of them pull away.

“I don’t think so,” James answers, looking down at the linoleum floor. “You were serving under my command until not long ago, and any romantic relationship between us I thought of as inappropriate and inadvisable, and I believe you must’ve thought the same.”

“Then I’m glad I resigned my commission. I don’t regret it.”

Back in the day, he might have said they were lucky he resigned, he considers.

“One of the many things I have been thinking about, actually,” James says, “is to offer you the possibility to be reinstated as Captain of the Ace Operatives… or given the circumstances and your exceptional service to Atlas even outside the ranks of the military, a promotion wouldn’t be out of place, should you accept it.”

Does this mean they’d be back to square one? Trading their romantic involvement for a professional relationship once again? 

“Is this your way of breaking up with me?” Clover voices affably, too affably, way too conscious of the smile still painted on his lips. 

He can’t believe it, there’s no way he can believe it, he’s too aware of the sensation of freefalling in his gut, too afraid of the inevitable collision when realisation hits… if realisation hits…

Maybe he’s being foolish, maybe they’re not even a relationship yet. All they’ve been doing together recently is… testing the waters, for lack of a better description. But James’s eyes don’t deny it, and all they’ve been through in the past few days alone is enough to bring them closer together than a lifetime of idleness together ever could. It’s through breaking them that life showed them how well their shattered pieces matched together when assembled back together.

“I cannot always be selfish, Clover. Sometimes I have to propose what’s best for you.”

Is realisation hitting? Clover can’t tell, strange tingles are crawling up from his fingertips.

“What’s best for me? The best thing that ever happened to me is to have met you, and for you to have paired me up with Qrow.”

“Yet I know you’ve been itching to go back on the field to fight ever since you woke up in hospital, knowing nothing more than your name and Semblance. You’ve been risking your life out there, and I’ve let you because it helped you mentally, but it hurt me to watch that, and your injury would’ve healed faster if you hadn’t insisted on getting back to fighting so soon. This job as a Huntsman, this rank as Captain of the Ace Ops, this is _who you are_ , Clover, and I don’t want to take that away from you. I just want to make sure that you have this option, and I beg you to consider it.”

“But… what about us? Do you still feel like it’s unprofessional for us to see each other if I work under your orders?”

“It wasn’t just about unprofessional. It was about me being too afraid to lose the friendly bond, the deep bond we had by trying something else. I was afraid to lose our friendship, until I almost lost you.”

He glances up at where Clover’s scar lies beneath his clothing, and wordlessly the ex-Captain takes the General’s hand and places it atop the healing tissue, the gross, damaged tissue, where they can both sense his erratic heartbeat. And Clover’s heartbeat is a lifeline, anchoring them both, it’s irregular, it’s a mess, it’s imperfect but that’s the best they can do right now.

“And then I realised,” James continues, “that I never want to lose you again. That I can’t be perfect for you, that my brokenness will damage you anyway, that you can’t be perfect, that you’ve always been broken in your very own way, but I’d rather be imperfect and try and fail and try again with you and Qrow than be imperfect on my own. If you’ll have me, of course.”

It’s through breaking them and forcing them to stitch their pieces back together as best as they can that life showed them how brightly the light could shine between the cracks, wherever the fragments don’t fit perfectly.

“Of course, of course I will...” Clover whispers back, tears ticklings at the bottom of his eyelids. “It won’t be perfect, but we can try figuring it out together. Starting with whether I want to work as your subordinate or not.”

“How sappy,” Qrow drawls, glaring at them through heavy eyelids as he shifts around on his pillow to face James and Clover. “I think I’m gonna cry too. But for the more pragmatic stuff, lucky charm here isn’t too bad with kids, if you can believe it. He wasn’t doing badly with chaperoning teams on the snow fight day, and he wasn’t doing badly when devising a plan for a dozen kiddos on a group chat...”

“What group chat?” James echoes, confused. “That group chat, again?”

“And anyway, Jimmy, you can’t and shouldn’t stay as both General and Headmaster forever.”

“Qrow, are you suggesting I should take over the Academy!?” Clover gasps. “But I haven’t been teaching since… yeah exactly, I can’t even remember when’s the last time I’ve been teaching, let alone remember any of the relevant things I’m supposed to teach these kids...”

The General rubs his beard with his gloved hand, lost in thought.

“Professor Sanderson is retiring soon, it could be beneficial if I appointed you as her replacement in combat training. Then we could go from there and see if the position suits you, if you could move on to becoming a full professor, and more later on. Would you like that?”

“I… uh. Wow. Just… wow.”

“Perfect. We’ll get Qrow to train you on your eloquence skills then,” the General notes. 

“Why me?” the shapeshifter bemoans. “I know Jimmy’s speeches are usually less than stellar, but why does it always need to be me? Cut me some slack, I’m in a hospital bed right now, dammit.”

“Each of us has been in one at some point in the last few weeks,” James reminds him sternly but not without a hint of gentle concern. “It’s only fair that it’s your turn now.”

“Yes, but Qrow’s got it the hardest because there’s no pretty birds flying in through the window to give him dogs to cuddle,” Clover counters.

Just their luck, the door bursts open at the sound of that familiar voice.

“Salutations!!!”

And the Winter Maiden erupts into the hospital room, with a middle-aged Huntsman Clover vaguely recognises at her heels holding a certain black and white puppy between his burly arms.

“We wanted to wait until you guys were done with your heartfelt moment,” the Huntsman says, “until we might have overheard you were in need of Zwei cuddles.”

As if on cue, the corgi leaps out of the arms of the tan, blonde man and snuggles its way into Qrow’s lap, happily licking his face while Clover bends down to fondly scratch the top of the canine’s head before rubbing the soft hair all the way down to his pompom tail. 

“Oh yeah, he loves that,” the blonde assures with unwavering confidence. “You love that, Zwei, don’t you? You’re such a spoiled pup, aren’t you?”

“Hello, have we met?” Clover replies confusedly. “I think I might have overseen you through your ex-wife’s vagina-thing...”

As heat burns its way to his cheeks, Clover’s mind still processes how it made the connection between Raven’s swirling red bursts of Semblance and a certain reproductive organ. Such a great way to make a first impression on a dashing man, he thinks to himself. In front of his two boyfriends, no less. At least Zwei is yapping quite merrily between Qrow’s arms right now.

“The impression is mutual,” the newcomer responds, “nice arm sash by the way. No way in Remnant I could forget such a handsome red sash and the muscles that go with it. Qrow, I like this new guy already.”

“Professor Xiao Long,” James nods solemnly, running oblivious fingers against one fluffy side of Zwei’s body while Penny massages the other side, to the corgi’s squirming delight. “It has been a long time, I believe.”

“Not that I wish to interrupt this warm reunion, Sir,” a female voice calls out from the door, “but Dr Polendina wishes to speak to you.” 

Winter stands stoically in the doorway, her arms crossed behind her back and the gravest of expressions stretching her dishevelled features. 

“Very well, Specialist Schnee,” her superior answers, drawing a deep breath. “I will be on my way.”

* * *

The hospital walls are white, worn white, dirty white, but the Schnees look even paler. The siblings are lined up in apple pie order on one side of the room, while James takes a seat next to them. The chair is squeaky and too loud and uncomfortable, just like every chair in the hospital. Pietro takes off his rubber glove to wipe his brow and eyes with a tissue, before burying his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat. The General has known his top scientist for long enough to know this is not a good sign.

* * *

“That’s a total mood,” Lily Ebi decretes.

She wears a black biker jacket from the bottom of which her pale pink tulle skirt blossoms like a blushing flower. Stray silver chains connect pockets to zippers, echoing her asymmetric earrings and highlighting shoulder pads loaded with silvery spikes… the whole biker look appears not too dissimilar from James’s memories of Clover’s style back in his academy days. 

More importantly, both the jacket’s black and the skirt’s blush are pristine. 

Meanwhile, James’s uniform is covered in dog hair, and he has to meet the Council in a few minutes. 

Among the troubles he’d expected upon revoking martial law, he has no idea how this made it atop the list. 

“I can relate to that problem,” she clarifies for the older man, and again he can’t believe her because her clothing is devoid of any animal fur. “Just get a lint roller… General.”

And fumbling around her pockets, she finally provides him the relevant item.

“Thank you, Miss Ebi,” James whispers quietly as he uses the contraption on his coat, careful not to wake the sleeping occupants in the hospital waiting room.

On one of the uncomfortable chairs, Whitley dozed off leaning on his eldest sister’s shoulder, and even Winter allowed herself to close her eyes and catch a little rest. Weiss rests across Ruby’s lap, but she doesn’t look asleep just yet, which probably has to do with the silver-eyed girl gently playing with her long, snowflake-thin hair. Penny ran off to get some repairs done by Pietro and his engineers, but the rest of team RWBY is waiting here, alongside Taiyang who’s rather frantically making sure Qrow signs his paperwork properly before he checks out of hospital with his back and shoulder thoroughly stitched and bandaged.

“If this is not an intrusive question,” the General attempts. “You own a pet too? It’s not obvious from the state of your clothing, which is very well-kept.”

“Thanks, but well, there’s King Fisher, our house cat back in Argus.”

“Wait, we have a cat?” Clover exults, leaning over Jimmy’s shoulder. “Wait, did I… name my weapon after the cat?!?”

Better yet, was Clover’s frankly _bizarre_ idea to use a fishing rod as a weapon inspired by… a kitten’s name? 

“No, I named the cat after your weapon, because we missed you. We only got him two years ago.”

And he can’t process that all at once, but he knows it means a lot.

“C’mon lucky charm,” Qrow drawls into the former Ace Op’s ear, “you don’t think a pet cat could’ve lived long enough for your family to have had it since you were a teenager choosing and naming your weapon?”

“Well, with Aura… and maybe I’m not as old as you think?” Clover whispers back.

A chorus of awww’s distracts them as the children react to the picture of the sleek gray cat with almond-shaped green eyes displayed on Lily’s Scroll, seated in a cardboard box as if on a throne. 

“King D. Fisher?” Weiss deciphers on the kitten’s golden collar. “What does the D stand for? Dorian?”

“... Drei?” Tai perks up.

“... Donut hole?” Clover guesses almost at the same time.

“ _What?_ ” James echoes.

“Lucky guess, Clo,” Lily winks at her brother. “Even though that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given Dad’s tastes when it comes to baked goods.”

“What is this trend with people naming their pets after baked goods? Did number names run out of fashion?” Ruby prompts toward her father. “First that cute Muffin kitten, then Waffle, and now Donut hole? What even is a donut hole?”

“Does King D. Fisher help your dad with… you know… fishing?” Yang leans in toward Lily’s Scroll and her photos conspiratorially.

“Unfortunately, cats are afraid of water, so no. But he did bring home a live baby Nevermore once. And of course he sure enjoys eating fish a great deal.”

“Yeah, fishing isn’t really a cat thing. More of a bear thing, if you ask me,” Yang intervenes. “Can you imagine having a pet bear who loves fish and helps you fish?”

“Daddy? Uncle Qrow? Can we get a pet bear?” Ruby demands.

“Mother had one...” Weiss starts. “That could probably be arranged now that… I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Talking about her as if she were already gone?”

“My mother loved bears too,” Ironwood says. 

Clover realises Jimmy never talks about his parents. That sounds like a big first, but at least it helps steer the conversation to a somewhat lighter subject. Perhaps Willow would have liked that if she were still okay and sitting with them, she’d have liked them to keep moving forward, and so would James’s bear-loving mother.

“Really? Did she have a pet bear?” the silver-eyed girl prompts immediately.

“She told me she chose my middle name because it means ‘guardian of the bears’,” he explains slowly. 

“Arcturus means ‘guardian of the bears’? That’s cute,” Qrow comments, fidgeting with some loose thread from his sleeve. 

“And badass,” Clover adds. “Really badass. Both the bears and the guardian pa-”

“Hey, Clover.”

The former Captain swivels around to see the woman who called her name. She used to stand tall, but now her shoulders are slumped under the weight of effort and exhaustion. Her coat used to cut a proud figure, but now it’s torn and tarnished and clawed and gnawed away by the Grimm in several places. Her platinum blonde locks used to glisten in the sunlight, but now they’re a sooty, sweaty mess under the cold neon lighting, perspiration plastering yellow locks onto her tawny skin littered with scratches and bruises. Robyn’s tired, there were too many Grimm out there, even to Robyn’s standards, and that’s saying something. There’s still too many Grimm out there, and in her violet eyes the flame flickers, as if unsure there’ll ever be a light at the end. 

Of Robyn and Clover, neither can tell who stepped forward first. But the next second, she crumples in a graceful arc into his arms, hugging him closely as he holds her tight, as if promising to never let go. And they used to be teammates, they used to be the closest of friends, they used to bicker over raisins and share a dorm, but she still feels unfamiliar at the touch, and her coat is rough and dirty under his hands. Yet he doesn’t let go. She breathes brokenly into his shoulder, yet he doesn’t let go. Maybe he remembers what they were like, what it felt like to hold each other like there was no tomorrow, maybe someday he’ll remember… but right now it doesn’t matter. 

Right now all that matters is that she’s here, whole and safe between his arms, and she’s okay, and she’s tired and broken and sobbing, and that’s okay, and somehow they’ll figure out a way to the light, to the end of all of this, and that’s okay too.

“Hey, blondie bird,” he murmurs into her shaky shoulder.

“You finally remembered my nickname, lucky plant,” she sighs with the slightest hint of mockery that leaves him deeply, deeply hurt.

“I also recall that you’ve been in the field for the last twenty-four hours without a break, and that maybe you’ve earned one. I also haven’t forgotten that I was winning at Mao against you before Atlas started to fall and all hell broke loose.”

“Winning?” she snorts. “As if. Only in your wildest dreams. I’ll have you know our favourite little lamb kept the cards in order in her infinite pocket, so we should continue some time soon to find out who really wins this round of Mao.”

“Yes, we should… now?”

“Did someone say Mao?” Yang yawns and stretches while Lily looks up from the cat photos she was showing Ruby with sudden interest. 

“Unfortunately, I think I might have sprained my wrist when a Megoliath tusk flung my crossbow from my hands. I came to the hospital to get it checked, but maybe we can play after that.”

“Oh, I can assure you my sister will demolish you,” Clover threatens with a dangerous glint of mischief in his aqua eyes.

“That so?” Robyn arches a blonde brow in challenge. “Bring it on, mini-Clover.”

A small smile stretches her tired lips, and through the window a stray strand of sunlight drifts in.

* * *

“You wanted to see me personally, Sir?” Winter stammers, pacing around the room. 

The headmaster’s office hasn’t been in use since James became General, since it’s much smaller than his other office in the military headquarters. It smells like dust, books, dusty books, and paperwork, too much paperwork. Ironwood stands before the wooden desk where pallid old pages are piled up, while Specialist Schnee steps quietly on the carpeted floors.

“Yes, in the sense I wanted to talk to you not as a General to one of his best subordinates, but as a friend of her mother, to Winter Schnee. And I wanted to know if you needed a hug. I know it’s not much, but...”

He doesn’t know what to say, he knows it’s not enough, nowhere near enough. They’ve never been good at this, neither James nor Winter. They’ve never been good at words, yet they can understand each other without words by now. They’re family now, even if they weren’t before the events that just occurred drew them closer if that’s even possible. He shifts awkwardly on the balls of his feet, both flesh and metal, while she pauses to stare at the wood patterns on the desk with sudden interest.

“I… yes, Sir,” she stammers, before realising her formality, “I mean…”

She stiffens at the contact of his hands, his arms barely daring to touch her shoulders. Her back arches as firm digits graze the thick fabric of her uniform, before she lets herself melt into his arms, like snow thawing in the sun. Neither of them say anything, and that’s okay. Neither says Willow’s going to be okay. Neither says things will get better eventually. Neither dares break the quietness with half-lies. So they stand in silence, in each other’s arms. And that’s enough, that has to be enough. His coat smells like dog hair, and that’s definitely fine.

Only when they part does the General welcome Weiss and Whitley into his office. They speak quietly, as if afraid to wake someone who’s sleeping, but it’s not like the dead and the nearly dead are going to wake up anytime soon. They all already know what Pietro said, but somehow recapping it helps them realise it’s really real, helps them distinguish facts from that seemingly endless nightmare they can’t wake up from.

“She’s as good as braindead,” James finally says, “she has just the slightest sliver of Aura left that keeps her heart beating and her organs functioning, with a lot of help from life support machines. She might have reflexes when stimulated, her eyes might even twitch at times, but there’s no chance she’ll ever wake up.”

The silence is heavy, and the light from the window is almost too bright.

“So if Penny and the rest of her didn’t finish her off,” Winter concurs, her shadow blocking out the sunlight as she walks by, “the fall from the height of Atlas was the end of Cinder Fall.”

“But given Cinder won’t wake anyway, we can use what’s left her Aura to save Mother,” Weiss whispers like a mantra, whispers to convince herself, squeezing her sister’s fingers at every word and not letting go until it becomes true.

“There’s a chance,” the General breathes, “there’s a small chance, but a chance nonetheless. And right now that’s all we’ve got. The Aura transfer machines could be used to siphon what’s left of Cinder’s Aura and Maiden Powers to Willow, if it’s not too late. Willow may be too old, and the Maiden Powers may be lost and go to a random host. But if that little bit of Aura can save your Mother, then it’s an option worth considering.”

“What do you mean, worth considering?” Winter prompts. “Is there any other option?”

“Cinder will die for sure, and the fact we use her Aura to save your mother means that no one else who is heavily injured and comatose at that hospital can benefit from it. It means prioritising your mother’s life over others, and I don’t want to take this decision on my own.”

There’s a chance it all goes wrong, when he weighs the price of lives and makes that kind of decision on his own. He’s learnt that the hard way. Admitting it is hard, but he doesn’t need to, they already know. Asking for help is harder, but now all he can do is hope and beg even for the slightest bit of help.

“As Willow’s children, we’re not the best to judge,” the Specialist protests. “What do the doctors think? Or the Council?”

“I submitted this matter to the Council, and Willow is considered a hero of war after what she did to save Mantle, so their authorisation was granted to carry out the Aura transfer procedure. I just wished to inform you of the consequences that decision would have on other lives, and to gain your approval before making any definitive decisions.”

“A hero of war?” Weiss reflects. “That makes it sound like she already gave her life away, like she’s not even salvageable anymore...”

“Maybe it’s the intention that counts,” Whitley shrugs, and only then do they notice he hasn’t said anything so far. “You say there’s a small chance, right?” 

He looks small next to the large desk, and he hugs his arms as if he’s cold. 

“Yes, Master Whitley,” the headmaster replies. “Sometimes when everything’s desperate but there’s even the smallest, most infinitesimal fragment of a chance, trying our luck is the only thing we can do to move forward.”

* * *

“Aye, boss,” Marrow calls out, running a hand through his sweaty hair as he enters his name onto the mission board while Harriet nods at him. 

“Anyone else still in shape to fight and ready to sign up for a mission?” the Ace Op’s new leader continues. “That would be really helpful.”

Her eyes scan the audience of Huntresses and Huntsmen down the hangar as she taps her foot tiredly, too slowly to her own taste. After so many days, so many nights spent fending off the last Grimm, the fighters are beaten down, dirty, damaged, their weapons and limbs covered in scratches. If that’s all that’s left of proud Atlas now that they’ve won the war, Hare sure hopes it was worth it. From the corner of her vision, she spots more Huntresses in apparently better shape judging by the clean and untarnished state of their gear...

“Hey, you over there! Mind giving us a hand?” she shouts, dashing toward them in a flurry of sparks… only to notice she’s talking to the Protector of Mantle herself, followed by two girls in red and white who trail behind her like shadows, as pale as ghosts. 

“Oh, sorry, Miss Schnee, I didn’t mean to force you to pick a mission, with everything you have going on,” Hare waves sloppily at Weiss, “I heard what happened to Mrs Schnee and I’m deeply sorry. We worked together, however briefly, and she is a formidable Huntress and woman.”

“It’s quite alright, Huntress Brie,” Weiss nods curtly with a cordial, stinted smile. “You only have Atlas’s best interests at heart.”

“I don’t mind joining you on a mission...” Ruby chimes in nervously, “if you’ll have me.”

Hare can’t avoid Ruby forever, that is a fact. Hare has already apologised to Ruby, that is a fact… or at least, she’s tried to, provided Qrow remembered. And yet, it’s still hard, and it still hurts, and the Ace Op’s pink eyes still struggle to meet the younger Huntress’s silver irises. That is a fact. But now that they need all the help they can possibly get, Hare and Ruby still have to try to work together, to trust each other and have each other’s back on the field… and that’s hard, and they’ll try.

“I guess that could work,” the Operative judges, looking down at her shoes. “After all, the two of us pairing up is how we trained and how we fought, in the good old days...”

The good old days. It wasn’t so long ago, but so many events have unfolded that between those days and now, it feels like the skies have been through a million phase cycles of the shattered moon.

“Ruby, are you sure?” Weiss yawns into her partner’s ears. 

“Don’t worry Weissy, I’m combat ready,” the crimson-caped girl winks warily, nudging the Schnee in the shoulder playfully although it looks more like the two girls melting into each other’s contact. 

“I would have been delighted to join you,” Penny announces brightly, “but my father said I should first verify that all my systems are in optimal functioning condition and properly calibrated not to deal too much collateral damage, after I got many of my parts changed and my lasers upgraded to the newest miniature high-impact...”

“Pietro’s made new lasers?” Ruby interrupts, “Do you think he could put one in Crescent Rose? Wouldn’t that be cool if...”

“Ruby, with the way you twirl your scythe, you could very well blind your teammates if you had a laser on it. Not even considering it would distract Blake.”

“Alright, kids,” Harriet says, slamming her fists together, “we don’t have all night. Penny, how’s the whole calibration thing going?” 

“My sensory systems appear to be functioning properly! My thermal sensors indicate that the temperature in the room is at 71.255 degrees, which matches the thermometer readings from the central network. The pressure is 0.9983 bar, which is expected and consistent at the current altitude of...”

“If we go out in the tundra so as not to damage Mantle infrastructures,” the Ace Op leader cuts in, “do you think you can fine-tune your laser power while blasting some Grimm?”

“Well, that’s not the issue… rather, it appears as though an entirely new sensory function was added recently, and I still ignore what to do with it or how to calibrate it. It is rather alarming.”

“Try to turn off everything else and see what it does?” Harriet suggests. 

“Yeah, that’s what I do when a particular functionality on Crescent Rose feels off,” Ruby agrees. “Don’t worry, you’re among friends and family, we got you.”

“Okay. I will try.”

And Penny’s mechanical pupils dilate until only blackness and circuit boards can be seen through the glassy shells of her eyes, a low whirring echoing as her systems simultaneously power down and she droops like a puppet whose strings were cut. 

“I feel… warm,” the android utters emotionlessly.

“Warm how?” Weiss prompts further. 

“Warm, like in summer.”

Harriet’s not sure why Ruby buries her face into Weiss’s puffy sleeve at that, why the former heiress slings a comforting arm around the silver-eyed girl’s shoulders.

But Harriet’s sure what she sees next. 

Next, Penny’s eyes light up. Green flames radiate symmetrically from her extinct orbits, as surely as stars light up the sky. 

And when she speaks, the monocord voice out of her metal mouth so certain they sound like absolute certainty.

“She’s calling out to me. Our Auras are connected, and she’s telling me she’s on her way here. The Summer Maiden’s on her way here to help us.”

It's too little, too late. But eventually, help is on its way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I even looked up fahrenheits for you guys to write this chapter. That's to say I love you, please don’t hurt me. Donut holes are exactly from where you think I’ve got the idea from. I thought Qorvid might appreciate them. 
> 
> EDIT: No, Summer Rose isn't the Summer Maiden. Just putting it out there to clarify because it was mentioned. The Summer Maiden is a new character and we'll meet her next chapter :)
> 
> Stay safe and tuned xx


	29. Like water and sand between his fingers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we go through any chapter without warnings? No? Ok  
> Warnings: mention of racism. Also warning. This chapter is LOOOOONG. But the ending is worth it, I swear ;)

The Teryx screeches as it hurls down from the skies, its scream rippling the road and pavement, cracking the concrete and asphalt. But Tai doesn’t flinch. Instead, rearing one elbow for increased momentum, he punches the creature’s gigantic beak aside as it dives, a sickening crack echoing through the battle when his brass knuckle meets bone. The monster’s crimson wing flaps as it haphazardly lands, forcing the Huntsman to dodge and roll underneath to close the distance. 

Before he can retrieve his footing, the Grimm’s putrid breath is already caressing the short hair at the back of his neck as the beast prepares for another scream. Holding his respiration as he barely shoots an upward glance toward his monstrous adversary, he slams his fists together - and claws of pure Fire Dust sprout out from his brass knuckles, glowering faintly in the cold Atlesian air. Without even looking, he lashes out with a single backhand, tracing incandescent arcs that slash the Teryx’s throat open. 

Panting in shallow breaths, he springs back to his feet, anticipating the stench of gross Grimm particles about to fill his lungs. The stench that never comes - for before the creature even has time to decompose, Tai catches a glimpse of something shiny. And someone picking up the dying Teryx by its neck with a single arm. And tossing it into the sky so it can collide with a passing Nevermore, killing two birds with one stone. As the cloud of sooty Grimm remains subsides in the wake, the blonde Huntsman recognises the fellow fighter who took that impressive shot. 

“You’re right, it’s been a long time, General,” Tai greets quietly as the squirmish rages around them. “When was the last time? That teacher symposium that we went to in Mistral? Five years ago?”

Of course that was Ironwood, who else could it be? Who else could lift a giant Teryx with one hand and swing it into the air with enough strength to kill more Grimm with its decaying carcass? Who else could display such a feat of strength with nonchalance, and all the while look prim and proper and pristine doing it? Shrugging, James dusts some dark substance off the sleeve of his bright white uniform while drawing Due Process to eliminate some smaller airborne monsters fluttering around the overhead wires. In the distance, the automated turrets fire, taking down more flying dark creatures. 

“I did not merely go to that symposium, I co-organised it in my capacity as headmaster,” the Atlesian rectifies. 

“My bad. So that must be why you had the nicest suite with the softest bed sheets in the whole hotel. I remember it now.” 

Ironwood’s glare is impenetrable as he peers right through Taiyang, raising his weapon to pulverise an incoming Sabyr behind the blonde’s back. 

“You could have warned me at least,” Tai complains, raising his clawed hand to catch the next bullet out of James’s weapon. “I really thought you were ready to shoot me there. Some communication wouldn’t hurt.”

Chipping off the Fire Dust blade, the projectile elicits an explosion that clears off the remaining pack small Grimm down the street, sending their remains tumbling off the edge of Atlas itself. A haze of purple energy emerges around the exploding Dust, containing the damage before it can spread to the streets, and Tai turns to see the General saluting Glynda. Adjusting her glasses on her nose, she nods curtly, almost scowling at the two men before returning to her task and hurling more Grimm off the ledge, plummeting into the cold vacuum and toward the frozen tundra far below. 

The view would be sure to change, once the Staff is used to lower Atlas to the ground. Lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the slanted morning sun rays, Tai makes sure to catch a last glimpse at the surrounding clouds, Mantle amidst the tundra looking so remote, so small from all the way up here…

“I’m sorry. I’m not so used to working with partners in the field these days,” James says, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a somewhat irked, wary gloved hand. 

“So what brings you back to field work? I’m sure you must have spent a lot of time warming that big chair in that cold office of yours.”

“The fact that we need every woman and man able to fight or help in any capacity out in the field these days, as you’ve probably seen.”

“Well, you’re not half bad in the field. I can’t even use the pun that you may have… gotten a little rusty.”

Ironwood would facepalm if he weren’t already facepalming. Wiping the sweat off his metal brow, he jogs to the edge by Glynda’s side, evaluating the amount of enemy creatures they managed to drop into the void. The squirmish is ending now, most squadrons in Atlas already reported the sky city to be cleared of Grimm, and soon the only battlefield left will be Mantle. Only a last Nevermore swoops dangerously low overhead, prompting James to draw his pistol.

And refrain from shooting, at the sight of Taiyang rather precariously, albeit enthusiastically, dangling off the creature’s talons. Waving and winking at the headmaster, the brawler lifts two fingers to his lips to whistle, muscles straining as he clings to the Grimm with a single hand. But the response to his call is immediate. Accelerating down the street, the blurry form of a black and white corgi races toward Tai and the flying monster. As he understands the blonde’s signal, Ironwood draws his Gravity Dust pistol and boosts Zwei with a shot, propelling the dog in mid-air so he can headbutt the Nevermore at full speed. 

Under the dog’s attack, the avian Grimm falls off the edge of the city. And so do Zwei and Tai. Without wasting time, the blonde catches the yapping puppy with one arm, tearing through the creature’s wing with the claws of this other hand. Under the effect of his weight, the blades slice through feathers as if through butter - and deprived of one of its wings, the Grimm bird plummets through the void.

And so do Tai and Zwei. 

A purple glyph from Glynda’s wand catches them and carries them back to the ledge so Taiyang can secure his footing, the pup’s fluffy form still in his arms. From the corner of his eyes, the dog’s owner notices the General checking if Zwei’s unscathed and granting him a rather affectionate scratch on the head, somewhat to Glynda and Tai’s surprise. 

What shocks all three Huntsmen, however, is the shadow of a new Grimm rising from the downside of Atlas, hovering tall over their heads as immense, leathery vermillion wings beat lazily in the sunset. 

“The Nevermores were just bait,” Glynda exhales, “to attract us here, at this… thing’s mercy.”

The creature towering over them has the red wings and sharp beak of a Teryx, its size indicating it could be an alpha of some sort, but it’s nothing they’ve seen before. Bony white spikes protruding like rogue scales across its thin, long neck several storeys long, it appears like throughout years of life it could turn into something quite akin to the gigantic monster frozen atop Beacon’s tower. Infusing the debris on the road with her Semblance, the telekinetic huntress hurls them as a million stone projectiles at the monster’s face, but it merely blinks them away like mere lint in its eyes. Before opening its beak and releasing a shrill shockwave strong enough to wipe down the entire house block. 

And it would have wiped down the block, weren’t it for Glynda’s power erecting a fragile, makeshift shield between the Grimm and the three Huntsmen, her male colleagues using metal hand and Dust claws to anchor themselves into the ground b her side. It wouldn’t be so hard if she weren’t so exhausted from days of defending Atlas, days of rebuilding Mantle already. It wouldn’t be so hard if she could just redirect the attack’s energy, if they didn’t care or could afford the shockwave’s destructive power causing any more collateral damage. But they do care. And it’s hard. And they must stand their hands. 

Concrete is crumbling between James’s steel fingers as the scream pushes him back, yet he must stand his ground. 

Searing sparks stray as Tai’s claws erode against the ground while the power forces him back like an unstoppable tide. 

Glynda’s high-heeled boots are slipping against the cold, hard stone floor, and she knows she can’t last much longer. And yet, she must. 

“To squadrons beta to epsilon,” James calls out through comms. “Please send reinforcements to our location. New Grimm type detected, we have a code Z prime, I repeat, we have a code -”

A high-pitched tone shrieks loudly into his earpiece, forcing him to switch the device off right before the belting ultrasound can draw blood from his suffering eardrum. The flying monster’s shriek has shifted frequency, but hasn’t waned in its relentless violence. 

“The Grimm’s scream is messing up with our comm frequencies,” Tai shouts over the background noise. 

“Tell me something I don’t know,” the General snaps back.

He fires a Gravity Dust round at the monster, pushing it back if only for a few seconds, for a short reprieve before it comes back charging again, charging always. That leaves Glynda with just enough time to call upon lightning within darkening clouds overhead. Thunder strikes the Grimm, and Tai wants to let out a sigh of relief. But he can’t. Because the electricity coursing through the creature’s body only accelerates its powerful wing beats, projecting breezes onto its enemies’ faces, and its screams have only gained in deafening ardour. Instinctively, they raise their hands to shield their ears, trying the best they can to hold their ground. Out of options, Glynda glares at the monster as if wishing it could burst into flames if she stares hard enough. But it won’t.

Until it does. 

Fire catches at the crook of the Grimm’s neck, crackling through the bony white spines as if through dry, dead wood. The flames are spreading, engulfing the creature’s silhouette until the monster is fire, everything is fire, the world is fire. And as somewhere amidst the ablaze air, the monster shatters into a rain of dark particles, it takes the Huntsmen at the edge of Atlas a few seconds to adjust their eyesight to the burst of light. 

When the brightness subsides and their eyes finally adapt, as they wipe the soot and grime from their sweaty features, they distinguish a sand-coloured cape buffeting in mid-air, cloaking a levitating female silhouette from whose eyes stray golden flames, burning as bright as the sun in the middle of summer.

* * *

“Congratulations on your engagement!” Penny bellows brightly amidst the quiet Academy cafeteria. “So when’s the wedding?”

“Not sure, with everything that’s going on in the world right now...” Lily replies more softly.

She stares around in mild embarrassment, but the room is rather sparsely populated. After the evacuation of Atlas, Academy classes haven’t fully started yet, the buildings being used as a combination of a secondary military base, a depot for Dust and weapons, a makeshift shelter and a hospital after all Atlesian and Mantlese hospitals ran out of space. The students still fit to serve were allowed to join teams of Huntsmen on the field on a volunteering basis. While few tables are occupied, some of the fighters, including Clover, Lily, and Penny, have retreated to the cafeteria to rest, catch a nibble, or merely find somewhere to sit to inspect their wounds and weapons.

It should feel like home, the tiled floor, the scent of warm coffee and cold dishwashing liquid appearing rather familiar. It should feel like home because for a while, this was home to Clover, back in his days as the leader of team CRME. It should feel like home to Penny and Lily, after all the time they spent there as teammates. Yet, it feels foreign like this, so hollow and silent like a barren nest.

“Am I invited to your wedding?” the robot girl continues with relentless enthusiasm.

Penny is the only one without a drink, her digestive system, or lack thereof, not requiring or allowing for such sustenance, but she’s there to catch up with her former teammate anyway.

“Of course you are, Xan really misses you,” Lily assures, certain that her fiancée and the X of former team PXCL would be equally elated to reunite with a past team member. “And Clover too, obviously. In fact, we’d been waiting for him to try and set a date. Clover has been… busy lately. Too busy to have time to travel back to Argus, for the last couple of years, actually. Understandably.”

Has he been busy lately? He ponders, taking a sip of his quickly, too quickly cooling tea. It’s clear he hasn’t been home for a handful of years, so long that his sister named the house cat after his weapon, a house cat he’s never even met. There was his work, of course, there’s always been his work. And more recently, his injury that almost took his life, weren’t it for sheer luck. And his desire to remain in Atlas with James, for James, to be by his side even though his commanding officer had tried his best to keep his distance until now. And more recently, to remain with Qrow, to get to know him, to cherish him, to remind him he’s not alone. 

But then why a couple of years ago? Something must have happened before that, even before things turned harder for James after the fall of Beacon, even after Qrow and his gaggle of kids stumbled into the streets of Mantle like a flock of migrating birds accidentally flying north. Something must have happened a couple of years now, and he only remembers hazily. 

_ Umbrellas opening like blossoming black flowers under the storm... His father’s tired aqua eyes, the flickering flame of anger drowned out by rain, by disappointment… His father’s words, the smell of hot tea, the shuffles and ruffles of his sisters’ pale hands on their thick warm skirts, their father’s certainty that what happened to Ma was unlucky, an unfortunate outcome... White anemones under the rain at their mother’s grave…  _

“Clover? Is everything all right?” Penny wonders, her metal eyelids softly clicking every time she blinks worriedly.

“Yeah… just remembering. Or at least, trying to.”

“That’s good,” the android says cheerfully.

“But I’m sorry if my… schedule has caused Lily and Xan’s wedding to be delayed… I’ll do my best to be back in Argus shortly...”

“But Penny, have you heard any news from Ciel?” his sister interrupts, sensing his discomfort and accordingly changing the topic.

“No, how is Ciel?” the robot echoes, cocking her head slightly.

Lily takes a long, deliberate slurp from her milkshake before addressing that, so much so that her brother beats her to it.

“Wait,  _ who  _ is Ciel?” Clover wonders, setting his teacup down onto its small white plate.

“Wait, why is Ciel?” Penny feels the rather illogical need to complete, to Clover’s confusion while the giggling Lily apparently understands the reference.

It takes him seconds to piece things together. Of course, the C of team PXCL... Penny became the Protector of Mantle after her reconstruction, Ciel and Xanthene left the Academy and went back to Argus to get engaged, but what happened to the last member of their experimental team? 

“Ciel Soleil, our former teammate. Specialist Soleil, now, apparently,” Lily supplies. “I wrote her a letter and had the briefest of replies. She went through some fast-track programme at the Academy, got thrown around from team to team, and earned her Huntress license some months ago. She immediately asked for missions in her native Vacuo as soon as she graduated, but she might have resigned her commission and become a freelance Huntress to stay near her family when the General called all Specialists back to Atlas. I don’t really know. I was hoping you’d heard more, Penny.”

“No, Ciel has not answered my messages or attempted to contact me in any capacity.”

Lily swallows audibly.

“She was probably the one who was hit the hardest by what happened at Beacon… after you, of course. Xan, Ciel, and I were all left in the dark about you being… well, not human… but she as your partner felt the most like she was used and lied to. Treated as a baby-sitter for the General’s pet project rather than as a proper Huntress in training, not that you’re...”

“I’m aware I am not a baby requiring babysitting,” Penny retorts gingerly. “I am in fact four years old now. I am officially not a toddler anymore!”

“You know what I mean...” Lily shrugs, vaguely defeated. “Anyway, that’s my only theory with regards to why she wrote to me, but not you. She probably projected onto you about being lied to. You know how she is. Anyway, feeling betrayed is harsh, and I haven’t had it as hard as she does so I consider myself fortunate, but it’s no excuse for treating you like you’re less than human.”

“But I  _ am  _ less than human,” Penny says, gesturing to the faint glimmer of incomplete Aura she shares with her father. “And I should have told her -”

“No, I mean maybe you should have let us know, but it’s not fair because you almost died, and what Ciel and the rest of us have been through doesn’t even compare.”

“Yes, that was… an edifying and memorable once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I’d rather that it remains that way.”

“I’ve also almost died, and I agree,” Clover comments, crossing his arms on the coffee table.

“Even about the edifying part, Clo?” his sibling teases before taking one last sip from her milkshake.

“I meant that it reminds one that there is a probability life may be short and provide few chances, so each chance should not be wasted,” the android explains.

Clover’s always been lucky, he’s always had more chances coming his way even if he let some chances slip away like water between his fingers. He’s always been lucky… but others may not be. He’s always survived.

_ The Leviathan’s cry in the mines, James telling him to run, his footsteps echoing down the hollow tunnel.  _

_ The sunrise, the beautiful sunrise on the tundra. The cold. The blood, the snow... _

But others may not.

_ Clover was lucky last time that all his terrible decisions only reflected on him, that he was the one to get grievously hurt, and not others.  _

_ Clover was unbelievably lucky. He might not be as lucky next time. _

Others have not.

_ Rain feeding the flowers on his mother’s grave, growing fast, faster each day, more beautiful each day. The rain pouring louder than everything, louder than the angry sea against the cliffs of Argus, louder than his father crying, yelling, asking why Clover wasn’t there when Ma needed luck the most... _

Others will not.

_ His father, his red hair now rusted, windswept, weathered near as white as salt, his father crying about wanting his son, his only son back, salty tears raining down the deep canals of his wary wrinkles... _

Others will not.

And if he doesn’t seize his chance and reach out for them before it’s too late...

“I suppose you should tell father that I’ll be back home soon. Next spring even, so we can celebrate your wedding, Lily.”

“Thank you! You’re the best brother ever!”

She practically leaps out of her seat to wrap her arms securely around his neck, choking him in her warmest, tightest hug. She’s strong, certainly stronger than he remembers, and he’s sure she’d have made a fine Huntress if that was the path she’d chosen. Everyone on team PXCL, save for Penny, was handpicked for a reason after all. But she didn’t choose that path, instead seizing her chance to become a ballerina before it was too late, seizing her chance to step out of her brother’s shadow, after years of adoringly following in his footsteps, and carving her own destiny instead.

“I’m your only brother, as far as I recall...” he struggles to speak, to breathe, to exist, but at least he’s happy.

“GROUP HUG!!!”

Penny literally flies across the table to hug both siblings in her steel embrace, and it’s definitely getting too warm in the cafetaria all of sudden. They remain for long seconds locked together... they don’t know for how long, for how many instants torn off the blank pages of time. White and gray clouds slide by the window, desaturated light drifting into the room onto the dull tiles.

“But… shouldn’t you tell the General if you’re going to take your leave to travel back home?”

Lily winks at the Maiden as both giggle like schoolgirls, and Clover recalls they’re both young still, they’ve both got time still, even though part of their childhood was stolen from them, shrouded in lies and betrayal, ripped by cables tearing through metal as if through paper. But it’s never too late to be children, to be human, to giggle, to be ridiculous, to fail, to try again. It’s never too late, yet Clover feels the heat ascending to his cheeks in embarrassment at how ridiculous he’s being, at how obvious his feelings for James and Qrow are even though the three of them still haven’t talked things through properly. 

The kids are right though, he should talk to James. Especially since they’d recently debated how Clover could stay in Atlas and stay useful, how the broken pieces of him can still somehow form the new version of Ironwood’s right-hand man. Clover reaches for his Scroll in his pocket, before realising this is a matter better discussed in person. He can’t be sure the General has time or will take the news well, but all he can do is take his chance.

“Sure, we know you’re busy and have something to do, don’t even bother saying bye,” his sister taunts mercilessly as he tries to extirp himself from the hug, and survives by the skin of his teeth, just his luck. 

“Bye, ladies, and wish me luck, I guess.”

On his way out, Penny winks cheerfully while Lily waves with a mock salute.

* * *

“Clover, it’s fortunate you can join us now, I was showing mis Sarada our facilities,” Ironwood gestures to the greenhouse from the path, evenly lit by hard light constructs in the gray weather. “Miss Sarada, this is Clover Ebi, ex-Leader of the Ace Operatives.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the woman quickly utters, lifting her chin high as she speaks. “I’ve heard of your team, your General speaks highly of you.”

Her voice is youthful, yet raspy as sand, with the slightest hint of bitterness. In the colourless light, the burning gleam of her amber eyes could not be more out of place, more defiant. 

“As you can see, Clover, your reputation precedes you,” James continues. “This is Nooria Sarada, hailing from Vacuo.”

“Delighted to meet you, Miss Sarada,” Clover greets. “I hope your flight from Vacuo was uneventful.”

“As much as it could be. Perk of flying alone.”

Atlas is known for its efficiency. Each ship sent out to other kingdoms to ask for help, for reinforcements, is packed to the brim with Huntresses, Huntsmen, and whatever material resources kingdoms were willing to send. No ship was sent to collect a person alone, no matter how important they may be. That wouldn’t be efficient.

Clover checks their surroundings for eavesdroppers and lowers his voice as he deduces:

“Perk of Summer Maiden powers?”

“Bold of you to assume that because a young woman, a Faunus of all people, is important enough to be given a personal tour from the General himself, her only worth must be that she's the Summer Maiden,” Nooria retorts, her sun-coloured irises suddenly devoid of warmth, glaring daggers as hard and cold as ice.

“This wasn’t my intention to allude to your race or gender, I apologise if it was perceived that way,” the former Operative protests, hating how reflexively suave he’s sounding, as if it didn’t hurt him someone would think that way about themselves and their value being limited to Maiden powers. “My team prides itself on its diversity and...”

“And what?” she snaps back. “You have female friends? Faunus friends? Gay and trans friends? Doesn’t change the way people in Atlas view my kind, I’ve noticed the way everyone stares when I walk through this place.”

The saffron-shaded cape on her slender shoulders has its hood pulled up over her head, as if to hide her obvious Faunus trait. But the fabric’s warm colour only makes the electric blue of her reptilian scales stand out amongst her tawny skin, of her scales covering all of her neck and creeping symmetrically across both of her cheeks to surround her golden eyes. The faint iridescent gleam of the scaly skin looks hard, almost dangerous. 

“I will brief my men so that this doesn’t happen again,” James assures her, crossing his hands behind his back. “In the meanwhile, I can assure you Huntsman Ebi has been a staunch supporter of the integration of more Faunus within our Special Operatives.”

“I’ll wait and see,” she declares, narrowing her scaly eyes. “I’ve come here to help the people of Mantle and Atlas, not to see my kind being demeaned and mistreated by your people.”

“If I may, Miss Sarada,” the General continues, “how did you figure out you had a mind link with our Winter Maiden when you announced your arrival?”

“The hard way. The Fall Maiden reached out to me. She used the mind link to call for help. She probably called all Maidens, but I was the only one who came to her rescue. And it turned out she lied, it was a trap, and she almost killed me.”

She glances down at her shoulder, and even through the fabric of her cape the mess of scars starting there like a crimson river can be distinguished. The river doesn’t stop there, instead likely flowing straight to her chest toward her other shoulder. Her entire arm on the other side is metal. 

“That prosthetic...” James begins.

“A doctor rescued me. I owe him my life. He said he studied Maidens in his research, he told me about the mind link. He told me how to use it.”

“I don’t suppose you know his name?” James asks.

He doesn’t need the answer. It all adds up, her account appears truthful. Such a plan wouldn’t be beneath Cinder, especially with Salem to tell her about the mind link. Raven’s Spring Maiden wouldn’t have budged, seeing the tribe’s survivalist mentality, and Fria had been way too weak for years to save a Maiden so far away.

“No, I don’t remember. I’m here to help you, mind you, not be interrogated by you, so consider yourself happy you have my help. You might have died out there, if it weren’t for my intervention.”

“Then the least I can do is let us help you in return. Our doctors working on prosthetics are the best in all of Remnant, we can definitely work on some updates for your arm, and...”

Before he can expand, Ironwood’s Scroll buzzes, and his expression drops immediately as the words from the other end of the line.

“Clover, if you’ll please finish escorting our guest on her tour...” he mutters, before mouthing ‘it’s about WIllow’ to an understanding Clover and precipitantly excusing himself. 

“Of course, Sir,” the ex-Ace Op greets with a formal salute.

The fact that Nooria hardly wants to speak to him considerably accelerates the tour. They pass by a series of research and development facilities, just as any newcomer Huntress or Huntsman would be shown, and the words reflexively spill out of Clover’s lips like a rehearsed choreography.

“And this is the weapons lab,” he points to a series of pristine white lab benches behind a large glass panel. “We can repair and upgrade any weapon to the standards of our cutting-edge technology, including yours, if you’ll let us, of course.”

“I’m not comfortable with anyone tampering with my things behind my back. I can’t make sure you won’t put trackers or weaknesses of any kind that you can exploit in there. My weapon is none of your business.”

“I was going to say we’d be able to help best if we figure out about your fighting style, thanks to the facility here,” he gestures theatrically as he pushes the door to a training room open. “But even if you don’t want weapon upgrades, which I respect, maybe you’ll still like to train some time. Well, just to let you know that this room is to that purpose. That’s about it. And again, if I offended you I want to reiterate that...”

He wishes he felt confident and okay enough just not to sound like a mess, just to tell her he cares, and he’s here for her if she decides to stop pushing him away. But he’s not okay enough for that, not yet, not right now...

“Sure. Why not. Let’s fight,” she interrupts. “But no weapons, nothing that can be filmed and taken advantage of against me... You look worried, ex-Captain.”

“Your confidence impresses me, but it doesn’t scare me,” he says with an easy smile that doesn’t reach his heart. 

“Then bring it on.”

As he discards Kingfisher from his waist, she storms forward to tackle him onto a nearby pillar of blue blocks. He anticipates and dodges just in time, her collision with the column causing the cubes to scatter against the floor. Her cape floating in mid-air as she flips acrobatically on what’s left of the pillar, she locks her legs around his neck in an attempt to bring him down. Pain pulses at his chest through his scar, and it takes him several seconds to reclaim his breath, catch her ankle, and toss her away without hurting her. She lands elastically in a low crouch, before raising her head and attacking again.

She moves like a sandstorm, relentless and near-unstoppable, as elusive as sand between his fingers, following sweeping kicks with savage punches as he blocks, parries, and blocks again. Matching her fury with calm precision, he deflects a fist to his ribs with the flat of his hand, stops her foot with his forearm, before bending to evade a kick from her other leg. Suddenly, the ground slips beneath her feet, and she finds herself on one knee and one hand scrambling to regain her balance. 

Seizing his chance after his stroke of good luck, he grabs a fistful of her cape and hurls her into the nearest wall. The sound of her snarl in response reaches his ears, and soon later he finds his own shoes to rest on a slippery surface too, her Maiden powers activating to cover the ground in a thin sheet of ice. 

“Not bad,” he comments, only for her to throw a fireball at the floor, raising a smokescreen to block his vision.

Quietly cursing under his breath, he wonders if her Faunus eyesight can see through that. But that tactic is older than Atlas, and he can preemptively tell she’ll use the opportunity to circle him undetected and strike him from behind…

Except she doesn’t, instead leaping onto him from above. The sheer force of the blow knocks him to the ground, forcing the air out of his lungs. Not expecting such sudden strength, he struggles to keep up with her whirlwind of attacks, barely avoiding the last punch that misses his head by a hair’s breadth and crushes the column behind him instead. Hating himself for such dirty play, he places a precise elbow punch onto her scarred sternum, causing her to stumble backward, before using her own cape to restrain her legs. 

Anger flashing in her gaze, she licks her lips - and her lizard tongue darts out from her mouth, wrapping around his wrist and tugging him forward, calling him to tumble face first. The next second, she’s scrambling atop of him, pressing her elbow down to the nape of his neck. 

“Yield,” she hisses.

“You wish,” he retorts immediately, lifting himself off the floor back-flipping acrobatically to shake her off. 

She deploys her Maiden Powers to cushion her fall out of instinct, but doesn’t have the arrogance to pelt him with lightning of fireballs, instead aiming a high kick at his Adam’s apple. 

It wouldn’t have succeeded in pinning him up against the wall easily if his Scroll hadn’t chosen this moment to go off. 

“Hi, Qrow,” he answers the incoming call. “No, I don’t have a dedicated device to clean the ceiling, use a sponge… and a ladder, since you’re so short… yes, yes you are. Tiny birdie.”

“Ahem,” Nooria says eloquently, shoving him against the wall to assert her dominance.

“Wait, I’m in the middle of something, I’ll pass by later,” he tells Qrow before hanging up and grabbing her wrists, calling upon a surge of his superior strength to flip their positions.

It works, but it takes more out of him then he’d have expected. Panting heavily, he feels her struggling within his grasp, and knows he won’t last long before she breaks free. If only he felt better, his chest had healed faster, and his mind had enough energy to go on...

“It’s a shame, it seems like you have to go,” she coos, abruptly pushing him away. “Your lover calls you.”

Inspecting his soft smile in reaction to his phone call, she narrows her golden eyes. 

“I thought at first that the General was the love of your life, but maybe it’s just the way admiration for higher-ranking warriors is shown in these parts of the world?”

“No, I believe that would be a rather inappropriate way of acknowledging rank most everywhere,” he answers earnestly, faintly aware that the loving glances he and James exchange were not in any professional capacity, especially since he technically doesn’t even work for Ironwood anymore.

“So… you and your phone lover are part of the General’s harem?”

“No! Nothing like that. No one’s part of anyone else’s harem. Harems aren’t legal here. We’re just… dating, that’s all.”

“You think you’re high and mighty and egalitarian. But deep down you feel like you’re less than because of your scars, because you’re scared to tell your life’s story, to acknowledge and confront your past and your mistakes by sharing them with others. And that’s why your relationship looks so awkward.”

That’s an interesting, if rather reductive point of view. But if she thinks she can size him up so easily, two can play at that game. 

“And  _ you  _ are scared to trust everyone because you’ve been hurt before. Because of what Cinder did to you. The doctor who helped you may as well have wanted to use you, but you had no chance but to trust him. Now we genuinely offer our help, but you decline it because it’s on your terms now and you have a choice. It’s your loss, really. I bet Nooria isn’t even your real name, because you wouldn’t entrust any of us with something so personal.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you. Maybe I’ll tell you one day. But you’ll have to earn it.”

He bends down to reach for his previously discarded weapon, but Nooria beats him to it, excitedly pushing the button that expands it into its full form.

“A fishing rod,” she comments flatly. “You boast to have all of the fancy Atlas tech, and yet you chose a fishing rod.”

“It’s… of sentimental value,” he confesses softly. “And deceptively efficient when you’ve gotten the hang of it.”

“Your weapon, your accent, your mannerism… it all screams Argus to me. We had merchants from Argus visiting sometimes in my hometown.”

“Merchants from Argus are everywhere, they’re some of the best navigators in all of Remnant.”

“But your name?”

“What about it?”

“Do clovers really grow in Argus? Does any plant really grow there, or is the air too cold and the earth too salty?”

“My mother’s family was from Mistral. She loved gardening and named all of her children after plants and flowers… I think.”

“You think?”

“Traumatic memory loss.”

Inhaling sharply, she hugs her chest with her arms, as if to protect her extensive scars.

“Hmm. I can relate to that. After that Fall Maiden was done with me, I woke up not remembering a thing. That was just under two years ago. I wish I could tell you there’s a miracle solution, or that your memories will go back to normal eventually. I can’t really tell you it’s gonna get better, I can’t really tell you it’ll never get worse, and it’s not even a cycle. Some days it’s better, some days it’s worse, it’s just a chaotic mess. And you have to deal with it, if you choose to live. You have to make the most of better days, survive the storm on worse days, and I wish you good luck.”

“Thank you. I think I will need it. I have to go, but thanks for sharing this with me.”

“And remember what I said about life stories,” she snorts, whipping her cape over her shoulders and arms again.

* * *

“That’s not a good look, James,” Glynda frowns, her arms regally folded across her chest as he exits the hospital, each of his steps weighing like he weren’t half steel, but all lead.

“What do you mean?” he echoes.

She takes him by the arm and walks ahead, making sure that he doesn’t turn to look back. That he doesn’t even  _ think  _ about looking back at the hospital and what happened there, not right now. She wants him to think about something else. Anything else.

“I mean I’m taking you out. For ice cream.”

“Did you call an airship? Are we going to Mantle?”

After all, Mantlese ice cream isn’t renowned across all of Remnant for nothing.

“No, you idiot. When’s the last time you stepped into Mantle?”

His mind is too exhaustion-addled to precisely compute that. And to say he holds two seats on the Council of both Atlas and Mantle… he should know that.

“... a couple of months ago? Before Qrow and the kids turned up with the Lamp, and...”

“Exactly. If you were to be seen in Mantle now, after your embargo and martial law, you might get lynched on sight instead of served ice cream. So let’s avoid that.”

“That sounds like a reasonable idea.”

“I only have good ideas.”

“But ice cream in Atlas is overrated and overpriced...”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m treating you.”

“Does it make it any less overrated?”

“Stop complaining and follow me.”

He has a vague idea of where she’s taking him - it’s his city after all, not hers. But he focuses on matching her footsteps, copying like an automaton with a hollow heart. The tall white towers peer over them silently.

“I hate to admit it, but Professor Xiao Long isn’t wrong,” she declares after some time. “You are truly doing quite well in the field, and I am glad to see it. You could delegate the fieldwork to your soldiers, and yet here you are, standing with them in the field where the combat is the riskiest.”

“I can tell you’re doing the same, and with at least just as much success. You’re in charge of Beacon now, or of whatever is left of Beacon. How are you adjusting to the changes?”

“Not too badly, I’m grateful for Port and Oobleck and the others’ support. But... it feels strange, you know? Not to be someone’s number two second in command any more, not to have to do Ozpin’s dirty work in the field any more? It’s as if I could just focus on desk work and politics and get the people who work for me to do the rest, but it feels wrong.”

“Personally, this feeling never got old. The need to be in the field, to feel the adrenaline, to lead by example… I never got rid of it, even after years as General. I am a soldier and a Huntsman first, after all.”

“Yes, you were always a man of action. You are not like Ozpin.”

“And neither are you.”

It’s almost like they needed to hear that, as meagre reassurance, as rather lackluster validation for the choices they’re making, the paths they’re carving for their Academies and cities moving forward. But not enough time has passed, shadows of the past still loom over their heads, and some wounds never heal entirely. Neither of them wants to discuss Ozpin right now. James doesn’t even know if Glynda knows the truth about Oz’s secrets, and if she doesn’t know he’ll tell her in time. But not right now. She deserves to know, and he deserves one more friend to help him shoulder the burden. But not right now. 

She knows him well enough to sense his discomfort, and swiftly switches to a literally sweeter topic.

“Since when did you become so picky about ice cream?” she comments. “Last I saw you, you were hiding to eat cotton candy at the Vytal festival! Cheap, crappy cotton candy! Not that I’m judging… but what’s the change about?”

“Oh, it’s just an offhand remark Clover made, about Atlesian ice cream. He kept saying he knew the best places for ice cream in Mantle, but we never got to go there together...”

She snorts sharply, adjusting her spectacles on her nose before answering, probably wondering who this Clover person is and why James’s voice melts like chocolate in the sun at the mere mention of his name.

“And here I was hoping you and Qrow finally got your heads out of your pretty behinds and figured out your long-lasting feelings for each other.”

“It’s... complicated.”

“Why is it always complicated with you boys? Why can it not be simple for once?”

“Qrow, Clover, and I are seeing each other. We’re all seeing each other.”

At least Ironwood can be blunt. At least he isn’t one of these Atlesians who’ll sugar-coat everything in faux cordiality. And yet, she knows him too well not to realise he’s keeping part of the truth from her. 

“Is there a catch? Why do I feel like there’s a catch?”

“Well, Clover would indeed say that he’s a reel catch.”

“You are all insufferable.”

“Honestly, we’re still figuring things out. We’ve still gotta talk things through. And I don’t know how it will all unfold when the whole… situation clears up.”

He waves at Atlas and Mantle, the wreckage of whatever few pieces are left of Amity, the mangled remains of the wall around the city on the ground that’s painstakingly attempting to keep the Grimm at bay. 

“Why am I not surprised that you have communication issues? When Qrow has to remind you every other day about where the send button is?”

“That was once or twice, not every other day. And well, we were going to talk about it, but fighting and defeating Salem kind of got in the way.”

He barely notices it when she pauses in her step, nearly bumping into her as she grips his flesh wrist as if to never let go. 

“James… Qrow has been staring at you with utmost respect and admiration since forever, maybe even since before you tried to pull a noble self-sacrifice and blew up an entire mine over yourself to kill a Leviathan. Even though your heroic move definitely helped… and the beard helps, too. It helps a lot. These irritating men aren’t just with you because they’re nice and you need help right now, or because you need support because of all the trauma you’ve been through and all the responsibility weighing on your shoulders.”

“But they  _ are  _ being nice...”

“In your eyes only. To me and the rest of Remnant they look like they’re being just as unfunny and infuriatingly oblivious as you are. The point is, they won’t be gone when it’s all done. If that were the case, trust me - Qrow would have flown away the second he made sure Atlas didn’t fall. Trauma played a role in shaping your relationship, in bringing you together no doubt, but it doesn’t define your relationship. It’s what you make of it that molds it.”

The silence is tense, the clouds are tense in the wake of her words. He can sense her nails leaving crescent-shaped marks on the skin through the fabric of his glove.

“You know a lot about relationships for someone who’s never been in a relationship.”

“Hearing a man who’s been through multiple reincarnations whine about his love life and world-threatening romantic problems for hours on end is way enough to know all there is to know about relationships. And headache-inducing enough to never  _ want  _ to be in a relationship.”

“I’m inclined to believe you. Thank you for your advice.”

“No problem. That’s what friends are for.”

They’ve reached the door marked with an elaborate silver ice cream cone, but she still hesitates to let go of his hand, like a mother handles a rowdy child about to escape and commit the worst of mistakes. Lifting her riding crop, she causes the door to slide open with a flick of her wrist.

“Glynda, that’s an automatic door,” James sighs, rearranging his hair with his free hand.

“Oh, fancy Atlesian technology. In Vale we just use our hands.”

The place is just as expensive and stuffy as James predicted, elaborate ice sculptures glaring at them with their inexpressive translucent eyes as they enter. Their boots clatter against the marble floors as polished as mirrors, causing a few upper-class families sitting at the golden tables by the chocolate fountain to turn around. Fortunately, ice cream is a luxury in these dire times, and the queue between them and the colourful counter stands short and sparse. 

A mixture of childlike excitement and icy dread pool within James’s stomach as he considers the carnival of available flavours, the garish scents and sweet shades assault his senses - from caramelised rose petals to mixed Mistralian nuts, from strawberry shortcake to rum and raisins through Atlesian Blue and Manticore’s Egg, he’s not sure what to choose, and the queue is way too short to have time to make up his mind. It’s been too long, entirely too long since he’s stepped inside an ice cream parlour - and from the puzzlement painted on his features, it likely shows. 

When was the last time he even bought ice cream? There was ice cream in fancy formal events he was constrained to attend in his capacity as General and headmaster, but when did he last walk into a dedicated shop? He remembers they got some after graduation - Lazlo declared Atlesian blue wasn’t all that special, Arthur hesitated between pistachio and raspberry before Willow bought him both and settled for crème brûlée. What had James chosen back then?

“That will be all,” Glynda affirms, striding past the counter as if she owns the place. “And blackcurrant and mango for me, please.”

And before James can say anything, she hands him his waffle cone crowned with enticing chocolate-chip-filled scoops. Of course she knows him well enough to have guessed exactly what he’d choose, what favourite flavours he always defaults to. After all, that’s what friends are for.

“What are you staring at?” She reprimands the employee behind the counter with her most stern professorial glare as the young worker appears busy pondering if this is really General Ironwood himself buying ice cream, and a picture should be snapped for posterity.

“Nothing,” the kid stammers, “any toppings with that?”

“Do you need any extra chocolate chips?” Glynda turns to James, cocking her head slightly.

“I already have a sufficient amount, thank you. But you are right to stare and take note, young person, for this is Professor Glynda Goodwitch of Beacon Academy, and a model of virtue and courage for generations to come. Even though already busy with the reconstruction of Beacon, despite all the help we didn’t give but could have given Beacon and the other kingdoms in the past, she flew all the way here to aid us after we defeated Salem. She’s in charge of the reconstruction over there, these days, but she still does all that work herself, she sets an example for others. And this, young person, is someone worth admiration, respect, and remembering.”

“Can we… get a selfie?” the worker asks, staring down at the marble detail on the counter as a pale rose hue dusts their cheeks.

“... why not,” Glynda exhales, slinging an arm around Ironwood’s shoulders and allowing the teenager to draw a Scroll and snap a somewhat tilted portrait of the three of them. 

After releasing her grip on James to receive her own ice cream, she lowers her glasses to peer at the fine shapes of coconut flakes and the rotund transparency of gummy Ursas, pausing for a fraction of a second beside rainbow sprinkles as if about to make a comment, but finally passes on toppings and pays for their purchases. 

“What is so fascinating about sprinkles?” the General prompts softly as soon as they walk out, both their ice creams in hand.

The ice cream does taste divine, as heavenly as munching on one of those clouds around Atlas, but it’s still not worth the price. The Atlesian leader makes a mental note to go out for ice cream, next time he passes by Mantle… if he survives the visit, that is.

“It wasn’t the sprinkles,” she explains between two small, precise, almost feline-like licks at the top scoop of her cone. “It’s just… raisins.”

“What about them?”

“Raisins? As an ice cream topping? You Atlesians put raisins everywhere, you must really be insane… what, don’t you agree with me? Or are you gonna tell me you don’t mind them because that Clover of yours once mentioned he liked raisins? Oh, the things we do for love. The tin man gained a heart, but must have lost his mind in this whole relationship game, it appears.”

James is too absorbed with chewing on a small, soft shard of cookie dough encased in ice cream to respond.

* * *

Clover enters the kitchen, only to be greeted with the sight of a black-feathered bird wiping crab soup off the white ceiling with a sponge inside its beak and an absolutely deadly death glare in its crimson eyes. 

Yup, just a standard day in the life of Clover Ebi.

Just a standard day, when the bird turns into a gorgeous man with a knowing smirk on his lips and a soup-drenched sponge in his hand.

“Of course you had to flood the kitchen with soup a third time,” Qrow sighs, gratifying the younger man’s shoulder with a light, teasing tap.

“To my own defense, Atlas was dropping out of the sky while the soup was cooking, so I couldn’t do much to avoid soup ending up all over the ceiling.”

Rather comfortable with the shapeshifter invading his personal space, Clover softly nuzzles into his boyfriend’s chest, earning a low, satisfied hum. 

“I dunno, you could have put a lid on it.”

“I did. Too late, but better late than never. In fact, most of the soup is left intact if you want some. I’ll just have to take it out of the fridge and warm it up.”

“Sure. I want to try the legendary crab soup, after Jimmy hyped it up so much.”

“I’m not sure it’s all that great,” Clover mumbles, running a hand through his hair as he grabs a large saucepan from the fridge.

“Really? You keep going around telling people that they’re great and should accept compliments, but you’re insecure over some soup? Don’t worry, I’m sure it tastes awesome.”

A few beeps and clicks later, he turns on the stove to progressively heat up the soup, the warm scent of seafood and vegetables slowly drifting to their nostrils. Pulling a ladle from a nearby drawer, Clover stirs the thick mixture thoughtfully, while Qrow scampers off to find a couple of bowls.

The former soldier gives him a modestly-sized serving at first, but it takes only one spoonful to leave the shifter speechless for a few seconds.

“By the gods, this is fantastic. You call this crab soup? I was just expecting some crab and blended tomatoes or whatever veggies are roughly the same colour as, you know, crabs. But instead this has broth and corn and even asparagus? Clover, I love you.”

The broth is thick, tasty, and oily, delicately shredded crab meat floating inside. Some of the finely sliced vegetables crunch under Qrow’s teeth, while others prove more chewy, releasing even more of the rich taste of the broth when masticated for a long time. Qrow honestly can’t remember when’s the last time he ate anything this good. He wonders if after this he’ll ever be able to have seeds and worms again, even as a bird.

“Wow, the proverb was right, the way to a man’s heart is really through his stomach. I think this is a Mistralian recipe adapted to the colder weather and fish-based cuisine up in Argus, then my Ma put her own spin on it and added my Pa’s favourite veggies, and then...”

Clover trails off, choking back emotions at the bottom of his throat.

“And then you must have added your own touch,” Qrow smiles softly, “you may not remember, but I’m sure you did because this is fabulous and I love it. It’s a unique mix, just like you. You should try a spoonful, it’ll refresh your memory on how awesome this is...”

“It’s not exactly hygienic for me to use your spoon...” the ex-soldier stammers.

“Are you sure, lucky charm? Does the idea of exchanging saliva with me disgust you that much?”

“I...”

He’s promptly interrupted by warm lips against his own. Warm lips that taste like soup, soup that doesn’t taste bad at all. Warm lips that only linger for a second, drawing back too quickly, too teasingly, leaving Clover hungry for more.

“See? It’s delicious,” Qrow reiterates. “Want another taste?”

“Hmm.”

And the shifter leans in for another soft peck against Clover’s lips, and another, and another. Until the younger man decides he’s got enough of those games, grabs a fistful of Qrow’s shirt and pulls him closer, deepening the kiss and tasting each other, soup-covered palates and teeth and all. Until they can’t stop, until they never want to stop, never need to stop, even to breathe…

“Clover… wait… lemme… finish my soup… at least...”

A voice murmurs at the back of Clover’s mind. A memory nagging him. 

_ You feel empty and you need to fill the numbness with something _

_ So you throw yourself at everyone just for the sensations _

_ Been there, done that _

But it’s too late to stop, it’s not worth stopping for soup of all things. The soup can go cold, the world can go cold, Atlas can freeze, Atlas can burn, and Clover wouldn’t stop for any reason in Remnant. Qrow loves him, maybe it’s a joke, but it doesn’t mean it’s untrue to him. Qrow loves him and every lingering, searing kiss is a celebration, a love song, only serving to confirm that the ex-Captain’s feelings are real, reciprocating the shifter’s a thousandfold...

“Clover Jonah Ebi!!! Care to tell me what you’re doing?”

The General’s voice echoes like thunder, causing Clover to let go of Qrow in surprise as James irrupts into the kitchen.

“Is that your middle name? Woah, that’s on the nose.”

Qrow never understood the whole middle name thing. The tribe never bothered with such fickle matters. Instead, he takes another spoonful of his soup. Not the kissing wasn’t nice, but right now the soup is almost nicer.

“That’s short for my grandfather’s name.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Clover,” James reminds warily.

“Well, we need to talk,” the younger man says, jumping upright and out of Qrow’s lap.

“Yes, that is for certain.”

“Are you guys really okay with us… being in a relationship?” Clover attempts.

“Yes,” Qrow and James respond in unison. 

“... is that it?” Clover asks.

“I wouldn’t know,” Jimmy shrugs. “I haven’t been in a relationship like this before.”

“I’ve witnessed one. It was pretty crazy in its own right, but it had more to do with the actual people in it than the polyamory aspect,” the shapeshifter comments.

“We’ve all established that your sister is insane, Qrow. But what do you propose?”

“... I dunno. Other than… trying out luck, I suppose,” Qrow’s gaze flickers down to the shamrock pin on his lapel, while Clover stares encouragingly. “Trying, failing, pointing things out when they fail, and asking questions to succeed better next time. We’ve all got enough baggage to fill half of Atlas, between the three of us, and some days that load feels a bit lighter, and some days it’s a lot heavier, and we won’t know unless we communicate.”

“I wouldn’t mind being reminded where the send button is every now and again,” James deadpans tiredly, prompting Clover to wrap a loving arm around him and gently boop his nose. 

“Maybe here?” he muses, “or here?” he leans forward to drop a soft kiss atop the General’s cupid bow.

“And also...” the shifter begins, nervously burying his hands into his pockets. 

“Right, not throwing myself at people and making out with them,” Clover finishes bashfully, disengaging from James’s arms to look down at the kitchen floor. “Favouring communication to distracting people through making out, because I value both of you so much, all of you and more, and not just your body and not just your baggage. I just… care so much and I’m sorry if it looked like I was just taking advantage of your distress to...”

“To be fair,” Qrow interrupts, “it’s true for all of us, not just you. And talking is hard, we know. Jimmy over here can attest to that.”

“James… do you need to talk?”

The headmaster draws a deep breath. Cobalt eyes scan the room, unsure where to begin.

“I think Nooria and Watts are working together,” Ironwood states, anticipating his lovers calling out his paranoia. “Arthur did mention he knew the Summer Maiden was in Vacuo.”

“Yeah. Bird me was there and heard that.”

“Honestly?” Clover judges. “You’re probably right about that one. You worry too much for sure, but you’re probably right. Her visiting now is too much of a coincidence, and her whole rescue after getting wrecked by Cinder sounds a lot like a strategy from Salem to gain Nooria as an ally through Watts.”

Yes, James is paranoid. No, it won’t go away magically, even after they’ve all confessed their undying love. No, that doesn’t fix him instantly, not that he requires fixing, because that’s just part of who he is, of that beautifully broken mind of his that can come up with plans to save Atlas and fearfully keep them secret for just long enough for them to sometimes work. Yes, it’s a bug, not a feature, and yes, he needs healing, but only time may heal some wounds, and there are wounds even time cannot heal, can never heal.

“Arthur’s after the lamp. And that’s why he sent Nooria here.”

“The Lamp? Why not the Staff, or just to insert some virus into the system? Why the Lamp specifically?”

“He’s a scientist first and foremost, and a proud one at that. In his hubris, I think he thinks he’s the only one who can repair it and restore its function as one of the four Relics. I may be wrong, but I think Arthur has his eyes on the Lamp, and sent Nooria to this purpose.”

“So if that’s true, and we manage to get the Lamp out of Atlas without Nooria noticing, then it’ll be safe for now, and she’ll probably still stick around to help for a little while longer? Sounds like a win-win scenario, right? It’s not like the Lamp is that safe in Atlas right now anyway, keeping two Relics here isn’t exactly the safest option.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course he is, you said he was the strategic genius of this generation,” the scythe-wielder snorts tenderly.

“That may be a little exaggerated,” Clover amends, shooting James a pleading glance.

“Unfortunately, that isn’t the only bad news. The Aura transfer didn’t work, Willow is still in a coma. It was too late for the procedure to help her out of it. Cinder died, and the status of the Maiden powers is currently unknown.”

“But… Willow is still alive, right?”

“Just barely. Just clinging on. Maybe that last boost of Aura helped her a little, will help her heart beat a few hours, even a few days more. I don’t know, nobody knows.”

“James, this was… no, this is war, we can’t expect to save everyone.”

And in many ways, they were lucky. In many ways, they won the war. In many ways, it was almost a clean sweep. The whale was destroyed, Salem and Watts retreated and disappeared, Cinder and Tyrian were killed, and Ironwood’s side experienced relatively few casualties, even some of the ships swallowed by the whale coming out unscathed after its disintegration. Few casualties including none of the high-ranking officers, thanks to evacuation policies and the fall of Amity instead of Atlas itself. 

“I know that,” James declares. “And yet, it still hurts.”

It still hurts. He’s fought in many wars, won so many battles, lost so many soldiers and allies, lost so much of himself, almost lost himself forever more than once. And yet, it still hurts. He’s collected so many battle scars, mapping his body, marking his mind, he’s failed and fallen so many times only to pick up the pieces of himself and keep moving forward. And yet, it still hurts. He knew there’d be some casualties this time. And yet, it still hurts. She’s still alive, just barely, and yet, it hurts.

Willow was one of his first friends. Willow was like a sister… no,  _ is  _ like a sister. Like the sister he never managed to save. Like the sister he must keep on trying to save, because he must keep telling himself that it’s never too late. 

And it’s hard. 

And it hurts.

“Do you want some soup?” Clover offers quietly.

“It would have been greatly appreciated, but I only just had ice cream.”

“Is soup after ice cream not advisable?” the ex-Ace Op offers quietly.

“Why not?” Qrow sighs dramatically, draping himself artfully across the kitchen table only to earn an endeared chuckle from both his lovers. 

James’s mirth doesn’t reach his tired eyes, but Qrow can count that as half a battle won. And that’s better than nothing.

“I’m sorry, I don’t really feel like food right now,” the General says. “By which I mean, I feel like I’m a puddle of soup right now, but I don’t feel like eating soup.”

“Because that would be cannibalism. Right. Got it,” the shapeshifter teases, latching onto Ironwood’s side for a hug. 

“I’m not sure that’s how cannibalism works,” Clover points out.

“Never mind, let’s go to bed.”

“Qrow, it’s 7PM...” the former Captain says, waving at the clock on the microwave.

“But Jimmy looks like he just wants to melt into a bed right now.”

“That… would be quite agreeable,” James admits, blinking rapidly.

“Okay.”

With the careful work of Clover and Qrow’s hands, even the too many belts of Ironwood’s uniform don’t last very long before finding themselves defeated, and soon the three of them can change into pyjamas and slide under the warm blankets. They know they still have some talking to do, and that’ll be hard, and that’ll hurt. They know they still have some  _ doing  _ to do, the war’s not over yet, the Grimm are still here, the Lamp is still vulnerable, and Watt’s spy just turned up in town. Clover still has to make a move on his promise to his sister, and hope that his lovers will take the news well concerning him leaving so soon, if only for a brief time.

But right now, none of that matters, for they’re all snugly huddled under the sheets, Jimmy’s arm wrapped around Qrow’s waist while the shapeshifter rests his face against Clover’s chest, sensing his steadily, slowly healing heartbeat like an anchor, a lifeline amidst a storm. And right now, that’s enough, and right now, that’s perfect.

* * *

Going to bed at 7PM is a surefire way to wake up in the middle of the night. Being cuddled by two smoking hot boyfriends, one of which is half a literal furnace of machinery requiring the release of heat to function, is a surefire way to wake up in the middle of the night. 

Not that Qrow can complain. 

Not that he can complain about watching the broken moonlight drifting in through the window, caressing the pale bandages on Clover’s chest, highlighting the scarring irregularities underneath with silvery, soothing lines. 

Not that he can complain about the silver starlight pouring like water against Jimmy’s metal arm, glimmering gently in the night as the General lets out a soft snore, finally relaxed if just for a fleeting instant. 

Not that he can complain when Qrow shifts among the sheets to expose some more of his skin to the fresh outside air, only for James to crack an eye open, place a soft, sleepy kiss onto the shapeshifter’s hair before falling back into a deep slumber, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Qrow wouldn’t complain at all about being woken up at night, if it always meant being treated to such a sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… that was long. I doubt the last chapter will be this long, honestly.  
> I’ve read somewhere that in canon Jimmy’s favourite ice cream is mint chocolate chip. I thank Flame and Qorvid for brainstorming about Tai’s weapon, my mind was kinda stuck until I talked to them.  
> Sorry for not updating in forever, I’ve been plagued by, in no particular order, too much work, hay fever, bouts of anxiety, bouts of depression, allergies, being distracted by listening to the Hamilton soundtrack, being distracted by distracting myself from the Hamilton soundtrack by listening to the Phantom soundtrack, being distracted by writing smut, recording music, and too much work.  
> I’m pretty much scrambling to finish the last chapter right now so hopefully it should be done by the end of the week. Fingers crossed xx


	30. Like this, forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, hope the length of this chapter will make up for it!

CookieUncle13: hey glyn

BossWitch: If you ask me to come fix your bed one more time, I swear to you I’ll telekinetically shove the broken pieces you know where. Please just buy a bed capable of supporting the weight of three adult men including one with a bad luck Semblance, thank you.

CookieUncle13: goodmorning to you too <3

Don’t worry, bed is still intact this time

I would know, I’m currently stuck in it

BossWitch: turn into a bird, fly out, and turn back? 

CookieUncle13: I mean, I just don’t wanna leave the bed

So warm and cozy, ya know? ;)

BossWitch: Spare me the details, Qrow. 

So why did you wake me up at such an early hour? 

CookieUncle13: You know me, I’m an early bird

BossWitch: You didn’t write to me just to gloat about getting the worm, I hope?!?!

CookieUncle13: haha nope

Jimmy thinks Watts is after the lamp, and Nooria could be working with him

The lamp isn’t safe here in Atlas, too risky to keep two relics in the same place

I was wondering if it’d be safer in Beacon with you

I don’t wanna bother James with that idea just yet, with his paranoia and everything he’s going through, so I thought I’d ask you first

BossWitch: The Beacon vault is the safest, you’re right

But with the current status of the Fall Maiden, it’s a too risky decision to make

CookieUncle13: about that

BossWitch: About autumn’s condition? I know. Specialist Schnee told me.

How’s James taking the news? How’s he faring?

CookieUncle13: We managed to get him to get some sleep, finally

BossWitch: Good to hear.

I am very glad that you, James, and that young Captain are now looking out for one another and found happiness, no matter how unlikely and bed-wrecking that relationship may be. 

CookieUncle13: I don’t know about happiness just yet, with everything that’s going on, but we’ll get there eventually, with a bit of luck… ;)

BossWitch: Nice to find you so hopeful, but please promise you’ll take care of yourself. I just don’t want to see you getting hurt again. 

CookieUncle13: that was so many years ago. Everything’s completely different now.

And I’ve learnt my lesson from that time. 

The hard way.

BossWitch: She would be proud of you. 

CookieUncle13: Right, Summer would have liked me to keep moving on, bla bla bla

Think I’ve never heard that before? Think hearing it somehow makes it stop being damn hard?

BossWitch: I’m sorry

_ BossWitch is typing... _

CookieUncle13: Judging from beyond the grave is easy. Living up to everything and just living is fucking hard.

BossWitch: as a living person, I am very proud of you.

CookieUncle13: <3

BossWitch: But back to business

CookieUncle13: awww glyn, all work and no fun

BossWitch: It might be best to prepare a new Vault of sorts for the Lamp. Surely Atlas has a high-tech super-secure bank at its disposal that we could throw that Relic into.

At least until we make sure we have someone we can trust as headmaster in Haven and the Spring Maiden is retrieved.

CookieUncle13: Atlas’s #1 stronghold out of Solitas is in Argus

But trust me, you don’t wanna deal with Cordo. That woman’s nuts

And not in the sense of cashew nuts. In the sense of punch kids in the face with a giant mech at the expense of causing general panic and drawing in the Grimm to her own city kinda nuts

BossWitch: Can’t James put someone else in charge for a while? Knowing him, he would have trained someone he can trust for command, someone who’d have what it takes to take over after James retires

_ CookieUncle13 is typing... _

BossWitch: Specialist Schnee has some of the required skills for the role but is still inexperienced with leadership

And you hate her

CookieUncle13: No, I tolerate her these days, I swear. 

Girl’s got big balls and an even bigger heart. 

And hell of a temper issue.

Okay yeah I still kinda hate her

BossWitch: Do you think you could bring up the question with James?

Not necessarily now, but after some time

Or maybe make a group chat between him, you, and I so we may discuss such matters

Qrow, are you still there?

* * *

“Yeah, I agree, Argus has possibly the safest bank in all of Remnant,” Clover yawns, cuddling in closer to Qrow in the bed so he can peer at the shapeshifter’s Scroll over his shoulder.

“Shhh, you’re gonna wake Jimmy,” Qrow reprimands in a whisper.

But Ironwood only lets out a soft snore, lodged between Qrow and the wall in his deep slumber. The shifter peels his eyes away from the translucent blue glow of his screen to contemplate the General’s relaxed features, the peaceful way the early morning sunlight streaks his graying hair with rose gold… before a wet warmth against his back draws him from his meditations as Clover presses a soft, open-mouthed kiss against the shifter’s bare shoulder blade. 

“Good morning, pretty bird.”

The soft syllables pour like silk into Qrow’s ear.

“Morning, lucky charm,” he drawls in response.

Clover doesn’t answer immediately, instead peppering gentle kisses around the curve of his lover’s shoulder until he meets the side of his neck, drawing the most adorable squeals of half-hearted protest.

“Now who’s being loud? I’d never have believed the great Qrow Branwen to be this ticklish.”

“Is Argus really all that great, or are you just a chauvinist?”

“Changing the topic because you’ve got nothing snarky to say and are too afraid to admit just how ticklish you are,” the younger man teases, delicately nibbling onto Qrow’s collarbone to elicit more strangled chirp-like noises. 

“Focus, Cloves,” Qrow finally manages to exhale with a chuckle. “Young people these days, really...”

Clover buries his face into his boyfriend’s feathery hair, inhaling the warm scent of him, but he can practically hear him fondly rolling his eyes as he speaks.

“Argus is strategically located in Remnant,” the brunette answers, “a considerable fraction of large-scale Atlesian weaponry can be deployed from there. Considering everything that’s been going here recently, Argus is easily safer than Atlas.”

“So I suppose you’re volunteering to go there? To stay close to your family and all?”

“Lily’s wedding is coming up soon, and in general I should be spending more time with her and my other sisters and… everyone else.”

He needs more time. He needs more time to recover. More time to remember. To meet his other sisters again. To mend his mangled bond with his father, to tie back knots that were ripped apart by time, tides, fate, and fortune. More time to salvage whatever can be salvaged before it’s too late and hope for the best, hope for good luck. He needs more time.

And while this is the perfect chance, while his job could finally grant him more time near his family, he doesn’t know if he can...

“Sounds fair. You’d be perfect for the job,” Qrow grumbles.

“If Cordovin is that bad, it’s difficult to be worse, right?”

“Damn right.”

Leaning over even closer, Clover drops a playful kiss onto his lover’s stubbled cheek, earning a low groan of approval. At the gentle thrumming of Qrow’s chest nested between his arms, James twitches slightly in his sleep and nuzzles into the shapeshifter’s neck. 

Sighing contentedly at the soft beard tickling his neck, Qrow manages to turn around within Jimmy’s grasp to face Clover - who immediately proceeds to kiss him senseless, morning breath be damned. The angle is awkward, their teeth clashing, their noses brushing, the General’s heavy arm dragging upon the scythe-wielder’s shoulder as he attempts to lean in closer, to steal another kiss with mitigated success, and another, and another. But that’s all they can get, and that’s perfect, and then some.

“Is this your application for the job?” the shifter whispers, resting his forehead against Clover’s like it’s a boulder amidst the storm, like his life depends on it, and they wish they could stay like this forever, nothing has to change, everything is perfect.

“Perhaps,” the younger Huntsman winks, aqua eyes twinkling in the golden dawn.

“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to forward it to Jimmy.”

Clover bites back a hearty giggle.

“Maybe later. James needs his sleep right now.”

“Yeah. But do you think we should file a joint application? Argus has a lot of Grimm, including land Grimm, and sea Grimm, not to count the freaking flying ones. It could use a Huntsman like me, especially if there’s a Relic to protect.”

“You almost make it sound like you don’t like it here in Atlas and want a change of scenery.”

“Yeah, Atlas is too cold,” Qrow frowns.

In response, Clover wraps him into a tight hug, adding to the heat emanating from James’s body already pressed against the shifter’s back.

“Better like this?” the brunette teases.

“Now it’s too warm.”

“Now you’re too picky.”

And Clover’s right, Qrow’s too picky. Too selfish. He can’t have it all, like a corvid can only pick up so many shiny trinkets at a time. He can’t go to Argus and follow Clover, while remaining in Atlas to stay by James’s side when the General needs him most, while following the kids wherever their next adventure takes them. He can flap his wings in the wind, to try and soar above the stormy clouds, but he can’t control the tempest. But he wishes to. He wishes he could choose, choose everything at the same time. 

But winds never stop turning, and nothing ever stays the same forever. And birds must restlessly migrate, and Qrow remembers every time the winds changed. He remembers checking on Tai to make sure he and the kids were coping after Summer’s disappearance, before flying away. He remembers staring through the window at James with half his body ruined in a hospital bed, never lingering for long enough to be noticed, only yearning to leave and shift back to his human form so he can take a swig of the contents of his flask. He remembers all those times he made sure from afar everything would be fine, before flying away with the storm beneath his wings. 

He doesn’t want to fly away anymore. 

He wants to stay. 

He wants more time to lick his wounds, to help Clover and James pick the pieces of themselves back up, to heal whichever wounds they still can heal, to assist the kids in taking time to rest and grow before they inevitably hit the road again, and time and tempests carry them away. He wishes he could stay, he wishes they could all stay like this, forever.

But he can’t stay everywhere at once. Everywhere he wants to be, everywhere he needs to be...

“Qrow, are you okay?” Clover prompts softly. “I didn’t mean to...”

“Nah. I’m fine. I just… need some time to...”

“Why don’t you go back to sleep? Catch some rest before we all need to get ready for the ceremony?”

“Not a bad idea, lucky charm. But aren’t you gonna stay and cuddle too?”

“There’s a little something I want to do. For James. And for everyone, really. It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do.”

“Hmm, okay. But stay safe, please.”

“I promise.”

By means of reassurance, Clover presses a last, quick peck on the shapeshifter’s lips before regretfully retracting from the hug and stepping out of bed. From his vantage point, Qrow can admire the way the sunlight, filtering in through the flowy curtains, ripples off each of the ex-soldier’s back muscles, dappling the bandages tightly wrapped around his chest. It’s all imperfect, but it’s all beautiful, and maybe that’s what matters. 

“Hey, Clover?”

An endeared smile floats upon the shapeshifter’s lips at the sight of the younger man turning around at those words, adorable curiosity written over his aqua eyes. 

“Huh?”

“Good luck.”

* * *

“You’re sure it’s not too tight?” Qrow checks again. “Or too loose?”

“Nope, just right,” Ruby says as her sister nodes encouragingly at her through the bathroom mirror, busy pinning her hair up like she hasn’t done for years.

Sticking his tongue out in focus, Qrow gives a last, brief tug on the strings of Ruby’s corset before carefully tying a tight little knot. Usually, she’d tie her corset alone, but this is a corset for special occasions that ties in the back, and the ceremony they’re about to attend is a special occasion. And her uncle knows she likes it when he helps with things like that. 

She likes it when he swoops in to save all their lives in the nick of time, of course. But also when he doesn’t leave afterwards, when he stays and does minute things with the kids, like tying Ruby’s corset, brushing Yang’s golden mane, picking up the books Blake forgot around the place, helping Weiss with her braid. Like flipping pancakes for Nora, assisting Ren with washing up, buying comics for Jaune. Like fixing Penny’s spare parts with his Harbinger repair kit, or stitching back fallen buttons onto Oscar’s coat. Like baking cookies for all of them, whether with raisins or not.

“Thanks, uncle Qrow!” she grins before solemnly pushing her cape back over her shoulders. 

Under her crimson cloak, all of her outfit for the occasion is uniformly black. Blake opted for a dark gray woolen dress paired with a pale scarf around her neck, while Yang’s only touch of colour amidst her clothing resides in her usual leg sash. Any more colour would have been inappropriate for such an occasion.

“Are you gonna do anything about your clothes?” the blonde asks her uncle, resting her prosthetic fist against her waist.

“I’m just gonna stick to my usual emo style, kiddo.”

“Hey, can I brush your hair, Uncle Qrow?” Ruby practically begs, leaping into to catch the brush Blake tosses in her direction.

“... Sure, bring it on.”

He likes it when she plays with his hair, because he knows she likes it. That, and other reasons. Her small fingers pushing his bangs back feel nice and familiar, like home, like the first rays of sunlight over Patch. The brush’s prongs tug at his scalp as he focuses on the simple, sharp sensation, disentangling knots from his hair and worries from his mind while the brushstrokes return rhythmically, lulling him like a gentle tide.

“Should we spare some time to braid Weiss’s hair?” he hums after a while.

“Nah, she’s at the Schnee Manor with Winter and Whitley, they won’t pass by here on their way there. They just need some time and space before the ceremony.”

“Yeah, they sure do,” he nods. “And the others? Are they ready yet?”

“Ren and Nora are already in Mantle,” Blake cuts in. “They’ll join us there directly when it all starts. They’re still busy moving in, I suppose.”

“Who’d have thought people carrying that little stuff with them would take so long getting settled,” Ruby muses.

“Maybe it’s because we’ve got little luggage, but so much baggage,” her sister says.

Nobody’s in the mood to laugh, but her words ring uncontested in the companionable silence, only punctuated by the hairbrush running through the team uncle’s salt-streaked hair.

“Well,” Qrow remarks, “I’ve never seen those two kids as much at peace with themselves as they’ve been in Mantle. However weird that sounds, given that Mantle right now is basically still a war zone. There’s still a lot of Grimm-clearing and rebuilding to do, and I don’t doubt Nora and Ren would be happy to help.”

“Yeah, some Flower Power would be welcome down there,” his elder niece agrees.

“And vomit boy?” the shifter prompts. “And Oscar?”

“Both hanging around with the Ace Ops,” Blake shrugs, checking her Scroll messages. “They’re serving as security for the event, alongside Penny.”

“Are we sure they’re both safe? And none of them is being shot down a Vault shaft or dying of air sickness on the plane ride to Mantle?” her blonde partner jokes. 

“Those all sound like viable ways to get to Mantle for the ceremony,” Qrow deadpans back. “As long as everyone gets there on time and in one piece, I consider my job as everyone’s mother hen is done.”

“Ozpin would have turned you into a different bird, if he knew,” Ruby teases, fluffing up his feathery strands under her fingers. 

“When you’re done messing up my hair, can we get going?” he grumbles, raising his hands to ruffle her hair in retaliation. “As your mother hen it’s my responsibility that we’re not late.”

“Right, let’s head out, hopefully we can catch the next shuttle for Mantle,” Blake says, peering through the flight schedules. “You coming?”

The Faunus grabs Yang’s hand on her way out the door, and Qrow follows suit as soon as he’s brushed his younger niece literally out of his hair. Hearing her scramble to put the hairbrush away behind his back, he briefly checks in the mirror that Ruby didn’t turn his head into a bird’s nest before stepping outside of the girls’ dorm. 

He walks out the doorstep, only to feel a small, warm hand grasping his wrist as if his life depended on it. 

“What’s up, pipsqueak? C’mon, we’re gonna run late.”

“But then what?”

“Then we go back to doing our jobs and defending the world from evil. Or we could stop by and get some ice cream in Mantle. Not that these options are incompatible.”

“But… are you still gonna be our mother hen? After that?”

A pleading light shivers in her silver eyes, as realisation dawns like a winter breeze onto his heart. 

“You kids are gonna leave here, sooner or later, right?”

“If there’s a chance the Lamp may be restored, then our mission remains the same. We must go to Vacuo and retrieve the Sword.”

“Wait up, kid, the Summer Maiden is here and maybe not exactly on our side, so...”

“So as soon as her work is done here we’ll travel with her, and if she tries to steal any of the Relics, we’ll stop her. You said this was our job to protect the world, right?”

Each of her syllables is an immovable force, like a river running its unstoppable course, like time trickles by with inexorable certainty. Time has passed, yet the light in these silver eyes hasn’t changed, and Qrow still remembers.

“... Your mother would be proud of you.”

“People keep saying that… that I’m like her, but I don’t really remember her...”

“And that’s okay too. It’s not because… she’s not with us anymore that she was perfect, and that you have to be a carbon copy of her in every way. You’re your own person. She would have liked you to be your own person, and we’re all so proud of you.”

She stares down at her boots for several seconds before meeting his crimson gaze again.

“... Uncle Qrow, can I give you a hug?”

“Quickly then, we have a shuttle to catch and a ceremony to go to.”

Fondly cradling her head against his heart, he allows her to practically melt into a puddle of petals and warmth around him… but little did he know that was a trap, allowing Blake and Yang to wrap their arms around him. Those kids are a river that runs its course, those kids are an immovable force, and as gold, black, red hair tickle his nose, threatening to elicit a sneeze, their embrace is the most inescapable grip he’s ever been trapped in - not that he’d ever want to escape. 

“Group hug!”

“Dammit kids, if we run late you’ll make me look like a bad mother hen.”

* * *

"It still feels weird to have a statue of someone who's still alive," Whitley notes, checking for the umpteenth time that his booths are properly polished.

Not that it isn't too late now. The cobbled plaza under his feet is brand new and squeaky clean, in stark contrast with the rest of grimy Mantle, fine white sand surrounding the square patch of grass in the centre. Amidst the green stands a pedestal, atop which a tall sculpture thrones, covered in a thick white sheet. The crowds gathered for the statue unveiling are sparse - Grimm attacks in Mantle are still ongoing these days, even if the relentless work of Huntsmen and the Summer Maiden as well as Professor Goodwitch's efforts on the wall breach have helped reduce the number of dark creatures. 

"You know, master Schnee," the General replies, "the plans we used for this square were initially meant to house a statue of me, and I'm still very much still alive."

“You wanted to erect a statue of you?” the boy asks.

“Not really, I never cared for it. But the council thought it might be a good idea, to assert Atlesian authority in Mantle.”

The young heir, no doubt accustomed to formal attire, should look way more comfortable in the tailored ashen three-piece suit he wears, yet it feels at once too large for his thin shoulders and as tight, hard, and cold as a prison around his body. He adjusts his pale blue tie again, matching the cerulean shade of his irises amongst his unusually bloodshot and puffy eyes.

“I can tell what you’re thinking, Whitley,” the General bends slightly toward his shorter interlocutor, the slightest of sad smiles in his eyes, “and I agree with you. A statue of me would have been a terrible choice. It would have been defaced within days. Not that I would have been personally offended, but it would have been a waste of public money and time.”

“May I remind you, Sir, that my family is paying for all the costs of this statue?”

“While Atlas is covering the costs of the pedestal and the plaza, I am well aware.”

“Will you two stop bickering about money while… oh, I apologise, General Ironwood, sir,” Winter mumbles, staring away as fast as she’d revolved toward her brother and her commanding officer.

“No worries, Specialist Schnee,” James replies heavily. “You’re right, we should stop, your sister’s speech is about to start any minute.”

And any minute, it starts. Weiss stands among the crowd, her pallid dress like a flower in the cold and the dark as mud-shaded silhouettes surround the plaza, awaiting for the words about to spill out from her lips. Drone cameras peer down at her features, and soon her video appears across all public display screens in Atlas and Mantle alike. Haggard in the dirty streets, more crowds gather to watch the screen, out of curiosity, out of fear, out of hope, wondering what she’s got to sing, what she’s got to say, what’s that thing covered in a white sheet behind her...

“Mantle, Atlas. Thank you for gathering here today. Thank you for watching, and for listening. I am Weiss Schnee, daughter of Willow Schnee. Today we gather to celebrate the day my mother sacrificed herself to save Mantle. To celebrate, and to remember that day that is now carved into stone.”

She turns and waves her hand, and a glyph whistles into existence, discarding the fabric and revealing the sculpture underneath. Alabaster summons, pale as moonlight, swirl upward to support the bronze statue. Willow dons a flowy dress James hasn’t seen her wear for years, if ever. He remembers the stuffy balls she was invited to in her youth, the invitations she’d slip her teammates to feel less alone, the lavish gowns she’d wear and the way they’d twirl against the dance floors, their lace trimmings brushing the marble tiles, weightless if only for a fleeting moment. The trimmings on the statue are off the ground too, but they’re hard, cold, motionless. Her hair gets in her eyes, but she still stares in the distance. 

The way they’ve oriented her sculpture, she stares south, as if waiting for warm southern breezes to billow in her metal dress and carry more clement weathers to Solitas. 

“My mother was… by which I mean, she  _ is _ a hero. It’s difficult not to talk about her in the past tense, after weeks she’s been unresponsive despite the doctors trying the best they can. It’s difficult to keep hoping. It’s difficult not to talk about her like she’s already gone, not to talk about her like the ideal of a person that’s already gone. Because that’s what we do when grieve for a loved one, we place them on a perfect pedestal. I’ve been there, we’ve all been there. But my mother’s still a person. She’s still imperfect. Still, she’s a hero.”

The siblings chose Weiss to speak for them. Not to sing for the family, for once, only to speak the contents of her heart. It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Winter declined to speak due to her ties to the military, wishing for their representative to stand for the Schnee family rather than the state or the army. Whitley never said he wanted the spotlight - at least, not in such a vulnerable way. 

“My mother hasn’t always been a hero. She’s never been perfect. She’s stood by and watched so many times, while she could have had the power to change things. She’s suffered so much under the control of my … of a certain Jacques Gelée, so much that she could do nothing more than watch the damage he made to our family, to our legacy, to the company. So much that she turned a blind eye for all these years over the way Jacques treated Mantle, treated his Faunus employees. She turned a blind eye, and after long years we thought the flame that was there in her eyes was long gone. That it was too late. But it wasn’t. Because it’s never too late. Because she reminded me, and she reminded all of us that it’s never too late to stand for what we think is right, to protect others who can’t protect themselves. And that, I will never forget.”

It’s not an order. It’s not life advice. It’s a prayer, a promise, murmured from daughter to mother even though statues with bronze ears can’t hear words. But the audience, huddled in heavy silence, can.

“My mother isn’t gone. My mother isn’t perfect. But my mother is a Huntress. And I’m proud and grateful that even after everything she’s been through at the hands of Jacques, she hasn’t forgotten that. I’m grateful, because everything our family has comes from standing upon the shoulders of giants, from standing upon the hard work of Faunus and humans from Mantle and Atlas. And today, thanks to my mother, I hope Mantle is somewhat grateful to have us too.”

And that hope alone is a big dream. The Schnees have taken so much still, compared to what they’ve given to Mantle, and there’s still so much work to be done before anything can be considered fair. But the Schnee siblings are young, and maybe just this once time can wait.

“And now, I… I wish to welcome a dear friend of my mother’s who remembered the days before she went through all that suffering, the days where she was still… a Huntress with all of her heart.”

Weiss is biting back tears as she steps aside. Paparazzis might mutter she’s faking, but James knows that small smile in her eyes, knows it’s genuine because he’s seen it so many times, so many years ago. And he won’t forget it on Weiss, just like he hasn’t forgotten it on Willow. Like mother, like daughter. 

The Ace Ops stand by the podium as James steps up next to her while she leaves him the stage. He doesn’t need to be introduced, people already know him. The flashing lights of cameras are too bright reflecting off his stark white coat. He’d considered wearing a more formal dress uniform, but it didn’t fit the occasion - and after inordinately long pondering, he’d settled for his usual uniform, for anything else would feel strange, anything else just wouldn’t be  _ him. _

“I came to speak to you not as General, not as headmaster, but humbly as someone infinitely grateful to be a friend of Willow Schnee, a hero of our Kingdom. For I have not much to tell you as your leader, and much to listen and learn from you all, for I haven’t done anywhere near enough of that recently. And all I can promise is to listen more. It’s not enough, it’s nowhere near enough, but I hope that’s a start. Everything I have, I owe to this Kingdom, so the least I can do is listen. Everything I have, I owe to this Kingdom, and to Mrs. Willow Schnee.”

Marrow has to stand on James’s left, surveying the audience at the ready to activate his Semblance and stop any attack should it unfold. Ironwood hates he has to resort to that, but he knows he’s resented, knows the crowds have every right to judge him for everything he’s done. But now, he can only hope for them to have mercy, if not for the General who declared martial law on a whim, for the grateful, humble friend of a local hero.

Qrow and his gaggle of children are watching from the crowd, and James can be grateful for that. Captain Harriet Bree of the Ace Operatives briefly seeks Ironwood’s gaze, as if she wants to talk to him later, but it can wait, of course it can. For a second he wonders where Clover is, but he has more important business, and he must keep moving on.

“Willie was my teammate, but she was and is so much more than that. She’s a sister and a leader. I remember running and laughing in the corridors of the Academy, chasing her and never catching her, like a bird that cannot be caged. I remember pool parties, lying in the sunset and dreaming about the future, still hoping the future would be bright, not knowing all the grief and hardships we would come to face.”

The sunlight that caresses her statue is the same now, but the glint of metal is harder than that of youthful skin, and more immortal.

“She’s a reminder that even after having seen so much wrong, suffered through so much wrong, done so much wrong, it’s never too late to try and change things for the better, no matter how unclear or unattainable that notion sounds. She’s a reminder that giving up is easy, but keeping on trying is hard, and keeping on trying should be celebrated. She’s a reminder that dying is easy, and that’s why against all odds she’s still fighting today, fighting to remain in the world of the living with all her strength. She’s a reminder one never gets the right to give up, like a dear friend of mine once said, because it’s never too late to be a hero.”

At least he hasn’t been lynched yet. Glynda would be proud, he mentally chuckles. She’s still busy repairing the wall in the distance, but surely she can push up her glasses to watch on a display screen near her, before raising her wand again and erecting the protection wall from ashes and dust. Somewhere nearby, the Happy Huntresses stand guard, Robyn checking the speeches from her Scroll with May by her side while Fiona and Joanna oversee the transport of supplies to the breach.

“She is but one of many. Many heroes who have fought in this war, fought against Salem, fought to protect the people of Mantle and Atlas. Some of them walk among us, some of them you’ve seen, some of them helped you, and you helped some of them. And unfortunately, some of them weren’t as lucky, and we had to leave them behind. So when you walk past this plaza and look up at this statue, imagine the face and the eyes of all of these heroes, of those we had to leave behind, and those who are still with us, still fighting for the right to live. Solitas is a frozen, barren land, and one should be grateful for the simple right to survive on a land like this. We should be grateful to Willie and to other heroes, to the countless heroes thanks to whom our nation is still standing.”

The speeches elicit hope. Remembrance. Forgiveness. Nostalgia. But they also elicit grief. Indignation. Fear, primal human fear before the idea of death, of life, of failure. In the outskirts of Mantle, some old screens flicker, adding iridescent artifacts and white noise pulses to the videos of James and Weiss. People watch the displays from their windows, watch the live feed on their Scrolls or home monitors. But the streets are the terrain of the Huntsmen who have to contain the consequences of human fear. 

Jaune slams his shield into the floor, causing a shockwave that sends a dozen Sabyrs airborne through the alleyway. At the street’s other end, Lily presses her palm to the ground, keeping the Grimm helplessly in levitation while the blonde Huntsman converts his weapon into its broadsword form. The heavy blade tears through the creature’s floating bodies like paper, but at every blow, after every kill, it’s heavier, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been keeping on like this, how long he can still keep on like this.

A faint, sharp sound whistles by his ear - and he dodges just in time for a blade as thin as a needle to dance past his earlobe and impale the Grimm before him through the eye. The monster barely has time to fruitlessly flail in mid-air before dissolving into a sooty cloud. Sheathing her sword back into her umbrella, Neo revolves to wink at him before charging onward, her slaughter style akin to a macabre ballet. 

Transforming his weapon back, he offers his shield as a springboard to propel her into the air. She gladly accepts with a graceful pirouette, opening her umbrella to slow her fall and taking out a new handful of levitating Sabyrs on her merry way down. As soon as her boots meet the floor, she dodges acrobatically to avoid a powerful paw swiping at her face. She uses the crooked end of her parasol to deflect, but before she can strike back, a flash of lightning reduces the creature to chars before her eyes. 

What a shame - Neo could have dealt with it. She looks up with a pout as Nooria, perched on a nearby rooftop, burns down the remainder of the Grimm. Neo still doesn’t like Nooria, doesn’t trust her. And judging by the cold light in the Summer Maiden’s eyes, her small scowl and the proud angle of her chin, Nooria doesn’t like or trust Neo either. Same goes for the kids - they’re not friends to Neo or Nooria, not even barely allies able to tolerate each other. But right now, they have to stick together to survive and fight back, and the rest can wait.

And waiting is what everyone and everything else does. Standing in shade of a covered, rather putrid passageway, a young woman inspects the Maiden and her ragtag field partners fighting in the alleyway, her sanguine eyes glinting with interest. For an instant, the umbrella-wielder swivels around to deliver a spinning kick and almost sees the observer - before turning away with that haunted expression of someone who’s seen a ghost, after checking and finding nothing but an empty, desolate alleyway around the corner. 

Only seconds later does the red-eyed woman allow herself to let out a heavy breath, while an equally youthful man steps out of the shadows behind her. His boot clink like metal against the humid concrete floor, and he opens his mouth as if about to say something. But the girl lifts a mitten-covered hand, interrupting before any words can leave his lips. 

“Shut up, Merc.”

* * *

The hospital waiting room is eerily quiet when Klein walks in. Everything smells like antiseptic soap and cleanliness. Sparse occupants are silently reading on their Scrolls or dozing off. He spots Briar napping on one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs - but he didn’t expect his wife’s head to be using ex-Operative Clover Ebi’s shoulder as a pillow. 

Briar had turned up to offer her services with her Semblance, to stabilise Willow’s state during the riskiest part of the attempted Aura transfer. Klein and Briar’s families have been at the service of the Schnee household for as long as they can remember, before they were let go. They can recall Willow from when she was a young girl with flames dancing in her eyes and snowflakes dancing on her hands. The least Briar could do was to offer her help. It was too little, too late. But at least she tried. 

Now she’s profiting from well-deserved rest. Not much has changed following the procedure and the doctors decreted Willow’s state would only improve if it were allowed to change, without Briar’s Semblance preserving it in an ever-stable condition. Klein suspects Clover sits there for the same reason - to support Willow with some of his good luck, to increase even infinitesimally the probability that she might show the slightest sign of improvement, of life. 

And even that might be too late. And even that might be too little. 

But Clover, as he equally dozes off, has never looked this relaxed to Klein, an atmosphere of electric good fortune practically radiating from his presence. The former butler knows Clover enough to know he’s been through a lot, he’s faced death and come back, ridden with trauma and survivor’s guilt. Maybe the military man finally seized his chance by being here - he couldn’t have saved everyone, but it’s not too late for him to try saving someone, even someone he barely knows, by being there and granting them luck.

The doctors are whispering by the door, as if concerned they might wake up anyone - even though awakening the waiting room’s occupants is infinitely more likely than shaking their high-profile patient from her slumber. They’re scratching their heads about her situation, about what kind of luck, what kind of miracle is still keeping her alive yet unresponsive after the Aura transfer apparently failed, what kind of force keeps her fighting, keeps her alive, just barely, by the skin of her teeth. Most of their jargon passes like wind between Klein’s ears. He also overhears that windows should be kept closed due to passing blackbirds visiting patients unauthorised, but that rumour sounds quite ludicrous. 

He’s only sure he’s been told he can watch Mrs Schnee through the glass. And through the glass, she almost looks like she’s asleep. Her skin is peaceful, her hair is peaceful, silvery strands spilling onto the white pillows. 

Klein wishes he could reach through the translucent surface to tuck her into bed properly, like when she was a little girl and he’d adjust her blankets at bedtime to protect her from nightmares. But he can’t protect her now, for nothing or no one can touch her now. She’s frozen in time as if frozen in ice, neither gone, nor asleep.

Only flowers watch over her, too many flowers, too many colours, so many that their heady scents almost mentally overwhelm him through the glass. The flowers are beautiful, but they too look frozen, as if they’d bloomed too precipitantly in the first days of spring, oblivious of the next wave of cold that encased their fragile, pretty petals in ice and snow. So many flowers, so many cursive notes on dainty cards, and yet, no sign. Amongst the beeps and cables that keep her body artificially functioning, no sign she’s still there in that body. 

All he wishes for is a sign.

A sign, any sign, anything. Even the most insignificant sign for him to know there’s still someone in there, someone within that glass coffin, someone with a soul even somewhat unbroken despite all she’s been through. 

If he were still wearing that majordome top hat the Schnees sometimes made him wear for formal events, he’d have removed it and placed it over his heart. But he can’t do that. There’s not much he can do for her now, apart from helplessly pressing his palm to the glass. 

All he wishes for is a sign.

And all he can do is feel the hard, dead, cold, transparent glass against his hand. 

And watch just as a transparent bird comes to nuzzle against his palm on the other side of the clear surface, a translucent Nevermore as small as his hand and as pale as a dream.

And just as fast as it materialised, the phantomatic summon flutters away toward the window so it can break out and fly free, free at last.

It’s a nice day outside in Atlas.

* * *

It's drizzling over Mistral. But it's all worth it.

The water weighs heavily over Raven's wary wings, soaked to the bone. But it's all worth it. Red eyes scanning the chaotic web of rain-streaked streets below, she swoops down into a narrow, desert alleyway. In the dark, grimy space, she can shapeshift away from view, rubbing her humid shoulders with her pale fingers for meagre heat in the chill, wet air saturated with scents of mold and rust. Wrinkling her nose in a silent scowl, she leans against the slimy black wall, avoiding cold droplets that leak from a mangled metal gutter overhead. 

Half a dozen Mistralians run across the street, shadows under the falling rain, but they don't notice her, don't linger for long under the unpleasant weather. Raven shrugs - she hasn't flown all the way to Mistral's seedy mafia-ridden underbelly just to watch some commoners pass. She's come because she has something for the black market. Something well worth a handsome handful of Lien. Something that will make her flight and this whole enterprise worth it.

"Do you have it with you?”

Raven swivels around to meet her buyer, greeting her with a curt nod. The chip’s corners are hard in the tribeswoman’s palm, while her other and reaches for the hilt of Omen.

“Can I see it?” the stranger says, barely a whisper under the pouring drizzle.

The woman’s face is concealed by a thick brown cape, only revealing the map of scars on her chin that serve as canals for the rainwater. She holds out a tan hand, in which Raven coldy drops the small, square chip. 

“Are you sure this is it? That this really contains a program able to identify weak points in Grimm from video feeds? How did you even obtain that?”

“I snatched it off a piece of damaged Atlesian military technology that happened to crash land by my place,” the shapeshifter shrugs. “Just a lucky catch.”

Nabbing the chip off Penny while Qrow and Tai weren’t looking, had been child’s play for the bandit woman during Raven’s brief turn as the robot’s honorary aunt. Sometimes her twin brother and his antics were a real stroke of good luck, she thought to herself.

“How can I make sure you’re not lying to me?” the buyer tilts her head slightly, inspecting the device’s cold glint with curious eyes.

“Remember our deal. Half the Lien now, the other half after you’ve confirmed that it works. If you’ve forgotten, I can gladly remind you of it.”

A rictus curves the tribe leader’s lip as her fingers curl around the handle of her weapon. 

“Right. So we have a deal.”

The stranger reaches out her arm again, and Raven barely seizes the tip of her fingers for a brief, firm handshake. 

Somewhere at the back of her mind, she doesn’t regret not killing her idiot of a brother. (Sometimes, he can turn out useful. Worth being left alive, even.)

* * *

While drizzle falls upon Mistral, it’s storming over Argus. Ivy Ebi’s Scroll buzzes in the pocket of her raincoat, barely audible above the whistles of the wind and the raindrops whipping her face, her clothes, the ground, the air. She takes a brief peek and recognises a message from Lily, no doubt about Clover, but she can’t afford to read it while still outside without getting the device irremediably soaked. This is one of the most violent tempests of the season, it’ll last for a few days more by Ivy’s experienced estimates. The storm won’t wane anytime soon. 

The graveyard overlooks the agitated sea atop the gray, ragged cliff. The waves are crazed and colourless, meeting clouds just as colourless, just as crazed at the horizon line that Ivy’s rain-ridden teal eyes struggle to distinguish. She brushes back a strand of soaked, salt-streaked brown hair under the hood of her coat, before turning around and shooting one last look at the granite grave where she just planted the flowers. 

Under the rain, the white anemones bloom. 

They’re beautiful, Ivy thinks to herself. 

(Maybe her tastes are growing closer to Alcyone’s everyday. After all, like mother, like daughter.)

* * *

LightningHare: just a heads up. 

The General and council approved the disbanding of the Ace Ops

stretchyman: thank you for the news, even though they hardly come as a surprise

TIMBERRR: awww @LightningHare I was just getting used to calling you boss

LightningHare: nothing stops you from calling me boss now ;)

Capt777: mood

LightningHare: cloves you’re not the boss anymore

Capt777: neither are you :P

TIMBERRR: but @Capt777 you’ll stay forever OUR FEARLESS LEADERRR

After_April: mood

Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official: mood

Go team CRME!

After_April: CRME forever!!!

LightningHare: it’ll take some time getting used to all of this

Capt777: it’s like seeing your kids off to the Academy

Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official: awwwww daddy cloves and momma hare

LightningHare: our fav rookie’s even off to another continent

whos-a-good-boi: yup, off to Argus with Elm for relic convoy and new adventures! :D

Wish us luck!

Capt777: good luck!

LightningHare: good luck

Hill_For_Councilwoman_Official: good luck wags

After_April: good luck

stretchyman: luck is illogical. 

Greensleeves: says the guy whose old boss had a luck semblance

stretchyman: Clover’s Semblance is subconscious manipulation of the probabilities of random or chaotic outcomes in the favour of the Semblance bearer. Luck is just a shorthand.

Capt777: yeah that would be too long. 

People would get bored. 

Luck sounds better

BananaHead: short, sweet, ladies must love it

Capt777: too bad for them, ladies aren’t really my type

BananaHead: guys must love it too

Btw @whos-a-good-boi @TIMBERRR

TIMBERRR: ?

Can I come with you can I come with you can I come with you

whos-a-good-boi: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

BananaHead: ?

Capt777: Jaune, you’re a huntsman now

You get to pick your own missions

I know it’s been chaotic around here since you kids got your licenses, but now that things are slowly getting back to normal you should be able to choose Argus mission assignments on the mission boards

BananaHead: ok thankyou!!!!!

Capt777: no worries kid

ThunderThighs: AAAAAAAAAA VOMIT BOY WE’LL MISS YOU SO MUCH HFHQFFHHKBFQKDGJ

zenmaster: what Nora said.

Travel safely.

BananaHead: thanks <3

You guys were the best teammates

Oscar too

CuteBoyOzpin: awwww thank you Jaune!

Means a lot to me!

You’re the best too!

R3dLikeR0ses: love y’all <3 <3 <3

CrazyCatLady: <3 <3 <3 <3

Copycat: <3 <3 <3 <3

* * *

It feels like an expedition into the wilderness. Penny’s even brought an appropriate hat. 

The Schnee menagerie’s maintenance has hardly been a priority since the embargo and the siege of Atlas. Wayward weeds creep up between the mossy cobbles on either side of the path, and tendrils of gentle green spiral their way up the bars of animal cages. A handful of exotic birds somehow found their way out, bright garnet and electric blue feathers fluttering over the kids’ heads while shrill avian cries disperse into the cold Atlesian air. The menagerie isn’t at its best, but Weiss still thought it’d be nice to show Ruby something, and Ruby still agreed it’d be nice for Weiss to be right here, right now, to take her mind off… everything. 

Ren and Nora strayed off the main path to contemplate a languid pair of sloths on their tree. Blake and Oscar are busy reading the detailed description by a Vacuan tiger’s enclosure, while Penny and Yang chat quietly, following behind Ruby and Weiss as best as they can. For the red-caped girl is but a tempest of crimson petals, storming excitedly from cage to cage and almost bumping into her partner as she abruptly stops.

“He’s here,” Weiss says simply.

The polar bear has seen happier days, but at least he’s napping on the icy ground behind the bars with a stomach full of fish now. And that’s better than nothing. Buffeting in the breeze as he breathes slowly, the white fur of Willow’s prized pet catches the faintly iridescent glow of the desaturated sunlight.

“Why is most of his name crossed out?” Yang deciphers on the small white plaque next to the cage. “What was his name before it was changed to Bombom?”

“James B. Ironwood,” the ex-heiress replies. “As a nod to the General’s middle name meaning bear guardian. My mother thought it would be a nice homage to her former teammate. But he didn’t appreciate his namesake being a creature kept in a cage, no matter how powerful the creature. So now it’s just Bombom. After one of Ironwood’s favourite sweets, because of course my mother had to.”

“Ironwood? He has a sweet tooth? Really?” Oscar lifts a surprised brow, catching up with the girls. 

“He has a habit of stress eating,” Weiss sighs. “It must be quite hard to cope with stress when one’s that lonely at the top.”

“Yeah, but now he’s got two boyfriends to give him hugs, so hopefully he’ll be better,” Blake says in a slightly brighter tone.

“Hugs are nice,” Oscar comments.

“Yes, they are,” Weiss nods.

“I bet this bear needs a hug too,” Ruby cocks her head, holding onto the cage’s bars as if wondering if she can phase through in a whirlwind of rose petals.

“Like… a big bear hug?” her sister offers.

The team leader’s cape starts to dissolve into petals, but the bear startles awake at the unfamiliar flowery whiff and emits a low, teeth-baring growl. The kids reflexively leap away from the cage, adopting combat stances, but Ren’s already pressed his hand to the floor, causing a ripple of tranquility to travel through the ground and calm the distressed creature, its dark, intelligent eyes blinking back into sleepy, cold contemplation. 

“It… might be too early to give the big bear a big bear hug,” Penny analyses, setting a hand onto Ruby’s dismayed shoulder. “Methods for animal taming may include getting to know him better and feeding him fish to gain his trust.”

“But someday,” Weiss adds, patting her partner’s other shoulder. “Someday we might be able to hug him. Someday, maybe.”

* * *

“Throw it here,” Tai challenges from the far end of the kitchen counter. 

“You ready?” Qrow teases, setting the baking tray onto the table, his hands deep inside cooking gloves. 

“As ready as I’ll ever be, birdie.”

Sighing lightly, the shapeshifter tosses one of the freshly baked cookies from the tray, which the blonde catches within his mouth with practised ease. They’ve done this so many times, since the old days of team STRQ. But as he struggles to swallow the large, brittle pastry, Tai wipes a tear from the corner of his eye, causing Qrow’s taunting smirk to immediately drop off his face.

“You alright there? Is it too hot?”

“Nah… I...” Tai chokes on his words as his former teammate gives him a firm tap in the back.

“Who’d have thought the fire-breathing dragon would burn his mouth with a cookie, of all things?”

“No, I’m fine, it’s just…” the brawler’s blue eyes are wet when they look up at Qrow. “Your cookies remind me of hers.”

“Same recipe, duh. I hope I didn’t mess up too badly.”

“You didn’t. They taste exactly like hers.”

“Too much for comfort?”

Tai doesn’t need to answer. They both know. They both remember.

They remember the recipe handwritten in her cursive letters across grease-covered cookbook pages. They remember her laugh echoing off the kitchen walls. They remember her hair floating carefreely in the wind, like the dew-cluttered grass buffeted by the breeze over Patch. They remember the warm glint in her silver eyes that refused to stop seeing the best in everything, no matter when, no matter who, no matter what, from Qrow and Raven to cookies to Tai to bears, just like her daughter. 

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” the shapeshifter whispers. 

_ Her handwriting in her cursive letters across grease-covered cookbook pages. _

“Yeah. It’s hard for you too?”

_ Her laugh echoing off the kitchen walls. _

“Still, after all these years. I miss Summer.”

_ Her hair floating carefreely in the wind. _

“I miss Summer too.”

_ Her silver eyes. _

The silence that follows is too heavy, but at least gravity pulls them toward each other, because at least this time they’re not alone.

“Can I hug you?” Tai stutters.

“Sure.”

Right here, right now, they’re not alone.

They can bear the burden together.

Especially with Zwei huddling into their legs to comfort them right now.

“Sorry,” Qrow mumbles, tripping over the corgi and breaking the hug in a messy tangle of lanky limbs.

“You’re as terrible at hugging as I remembered. Too tall and thin to bring any warmth.”

“C’mon, you missed my praying mantis hugs.”

“Yeah, that I did.”

There is a pause, but it’s companionable, infinitesimally lighter.

“Some things never change,” the shifter comments.

“But at least your cookie baking skills got better over time.”

“It took me years to perfect them… or at least, try to… are you gonna be okay, Tai?”

The question doesn’t have a real answer. Only time can heal some wounds, and even then not every injury can be healed by time, especially when tears only keep adding salt. The trauma doesn’t ever truly go away after all that happened, all they’ve seen, all they’ve done and all they couldn’t do, and sometimes the tears flow again like a subterranean river resurfaces, and sometimes the salt doesn’t taste bad.

After all, a pinch of salt is part of her recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

“I’ll be fine… I just need some time. Time, and Zwei cuddles.”

The blonde bends down to collect the black and white puppy, messing up the hair between its fluffy ears as it pants contentedly.

“You know, Tai, you trained him well. Zwei has played a big part in helping us all cope with... everything. And sitting on Jimmy to force him to relax, which has been a key part in winning the war against Salem. All in all, that pupster is one of the main heroes of the war we just won, and that’s in part thanks to you.”

“It’s in part thanks to him,” the brawler smiles sheepishly, nodding toward the short-legged canine. “And thanks to you, too. You’re the best uncle he could ever have had.”

“That’s all well and good, but I should take these cookies upstairs with the previous batches if I want them to cool down enough to be edible.”

“Good idea. I’ll just stay here for a while and hug my well-trained dog some more.”

“That sounds like a great plan… and by the way, thank you,” the shapeshifter adds, peering through the door with his hands full of cookie trays.

“Hmm?”

“For the compliment about the doggy uncle thing,” Qrow clarifies.

“Oh. No worries.”

“I’m slowly learning not to deflect compliments.”

“Must be hard for you.”

“It is.”

“But you’ll get there eventually. I have faith in you.”

“Thanks, Tai.”

Fondly rolling his eyes, the scythe-wielder ascends the stairs leading to the rooftop of Ironwood’s penthouse quarters. Because of course he has penthouse quarters, he’s not the General of Remnant’s biggest army for nothing. Only, said penthouse hasn’t been used much recently considering Jimmy’s busy work schedule. Even so, it remains an ideal place to bring cookies so the chill Atlesian breezes can cool them down. 

But in the process of doing exactly that, Qrow stumbles upon a sight that causes his jaw to drop and his feet to actually stumble upon the last step of the stairway to the roof. 

He’d have fallen face first and dropped his load of cookies to the floor, hadn’t it been for Clover catching him and steadying him on his feet. The ex-soldier’s palm is warm and reassuring against his shoulder. Some things never change, and maybe that’s for the better. 

“Jimmy, what the hell?” Qrow utters in his most vindictive tone once he’s regained his footing.

“What’s wrong?” the General lifts a surprised brow, wiping some crumbs off his palm. “I’m just tasting one of the cookies you left to cool up here on my rooftop.”

“But… raisins!?!” the shifter manages to say, in far too many words considering the state of shock his mind is currently plunged in. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I know you baked this first batch with raisins for me, but I’m totally fine with James eating some of them,” Clover assures while Qrow still shakes his head in disbelief. 

“Yes, they have raisins, and so what?” James shrugs. “They’re still cookies, and your cookies are perfectly good.”

“You Atlesians will eventually drive me crazy.”

“You don’t have to be so over-dramatic, Qrow,” the General teases gently.

“But I want to be, and I know you both love it,” the shifter pouts back.

“All that for raisin cookies that happen to be delicious, right Clover?”

“Aye, Sir!” the former Captain winks with a mock salute.

To prove his point, Ironwood picks up another raisin pastry and holds it up to Clover’s lips, prompting the younger man to take a cheeky bite. The dough sounds crispy under his teeth, while the raisins are soft and tough - before some effect of bad or good causes the remainder of the cookie to crumble to pieces between Ironwood’s metal fingers, forcing the ex-Ace Op to catch the crumbs with his mouth before they can shatter to the floor. And meticulously lick the leftovers off Jimmy’s steel digits before Qrow’s wide-eyed stare. 

Refusing that the shifter may feel left out, Clover pulls Qrow closer and drops a swift peck on his lips just as James slings his valid arm around the smaller man’s trim waist.

“See? It doesn’t taste so bad,” Clover teases, his pink tongue darting out to lick the remains of raisin cookies from both his own lips and the shapeshifter’s, only earning a wordless grunt from the latter. “But James, are you stress-eating?”

The change in the General’s expression confirms how perceptive the ex-Operative has been, how true his guess rings.

“C’mon Jimmy, there’s no reason to be stressed now, the war’s basically over, and a little bird told me the Council approved of your plan to use the Staff to raise the second communication tower over the atmosphere. Not even counting the fact that your popularity is rising again in the polls, after your nice little stunt down there in Mantle.”

“Qrow, I assure you it’s not what you think, and I regret it if it appears as though I used Willow’s dire situation to turn the public opinion in my favour...”

The way Jimmy’s rare, way too rare smile drops hurts. The clear pain at the perceived accusation in his solemn cobalt blue eyes hurts. It hurts way too much. 

“Gosh, Jimmy,” Qrow hushes precipitantly. “That’s not what I meant. You know it’s not what I meant. I know you think that because some people think that way, but they’re dead wrong and don’t know you. I know you, and no matter what they say I’m here for you.”

“Me too,” Clover adds. “We’re both here for you.”

It’s as vague as a statement can be. It doesn’t mean anything. And yet, it means everything.

“If I understand well, both of you will be leaving Atlas,” James finally says, uncovering the cause for his anxiety. “Clover, you’ll have to be back home in Argus, and Qrow, you’ll be travelling on with the kids to Vacuo?”

“I haven’t decided yet...” the shapeshifter confesses with a miserable shrug, nuzzling into James’s shoulder.

“Then why not stay here? I could also get you a position as professor at Atlas Academy, you were a good teacher before...”

“And pull some more strings so you can put both your boyfriends in positions of power near you?” Qrow snorts, “I don’t mean to offend, but that could be seen as abuse of your power.”

“I can, and will, only encourage both of you to apply for professorships,” the headmaster amends gravely. “I reiterate that everything you two ever earned is through your talent and hard work only, rather than me pulling strings, and that if you get the positions it will be well-deserved and fair. Does that sound better?”

“Yeah,” both Qrow and Clover reply at the same time through some stroke of luck, eliciting a short bout of giggles from all three of them.

It does sound better, but it still won’t be perfect. People will keep saying things, until the voices in their heads start repeating those things, over and over again. Until they look in the mirror each morning and see that mask of worthlessness that’s only gotten where they are because of their fortune and others’ misfortune and people pulling strings in the background. But it’ll all be worth it… hopefully. Because they’re here for each other. At least right now, right here.

“I’ll decide,” Qrow states. “If I leave, it doesn’t have to be now. It can wait for a while.”

“Same,” Clover agrees. “We can wait at least until the new comms tower is launched, since there’ll be plenty to do here until then. Then, maybe we’ll decide… we’ll see.”

“Thank you,” James stammers, holding his two lovers closer in an expression of unbound gratitude. “By the way, Qrow, you’ve got something on the side of your mouth.”

The tender, adoring glare from Ironwood’s eyes from this up close causes the shifter’s heart to flutter like a flock of birds about to take flight. But he doesn’t want to take flight yet, he doesn’t have to migrate again, to go wherever the winds of misfortune and fortune will take him. He wants to stay, to enjoy this lucky break, to cherish this respite. If even for a fleeting instant amidst the storm like those days in which the kingfishers come to nest.

“Cookie crumb,” he says simply, licking off the buttery shard of biscuit saturated with the sweet, sweet taste of raisins.

Maybe if he stays long enough, his two boyfriends will even get him to start liking raisins.

As he shakes off these thoughts, it takes Qrow a few seconds to realise what the two military men are looking at, somewhere in the azure distance. That’ll be where the new communication tower will be, someday, sometime soon, tall and proud to unite the kingdoms and make history. 

But for now, only clouds float overhead amidst the cold Atlesian skies, clouds sliding fast, too fast like skaters on an ice rink. Clouds that sometimes merge and coalesce, before tearing apart again under the forces of wind and weathers, of fortune and misfortune. 

But for now, that can wait. Misfortune and fortune can wait, history can wait, and time can wait.

~~THE END~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Azrfjiaufqqskfkfkqfhs im done i can’t even believe it aaaaaa omg thankyou <3  
> This turned out to be sooo long I blame y’all in the comments who’re smarter than me and fed me ideas <3 <3 <3  
> Leave a comment to say hi if you’ve read this far xx

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of experimental, will see where it goes. Knowing myself, the next chapters are likely going to be longer (because I can't write consistent chapter lengths for the life of me). Drop me a comment below if you want to see more of this! xx


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